Does anyone still use flaked food?

[AJ356]

I think I am ready to never buy flake food again for as long as I remain in the hobby. Mostly I use different sizes of Fluval bug bites granules/pellets or similar from the JBL brand. Outside of this, it's frozen brine shrimp, mysis, glassworm, copepods, daphnia or rotifer depending on the size of fish/fry.

The flake food I currently have is the Fluval bug bites one.

I find with flaked food, I always have to pre-soak it very briefly (a few seconds), or the fish look like they are trying to eat cardboard and lose interest. But once I pre-soak it, it's so messy at feeding time, random sizes of flake going all over the place.

Anyone else here said goodbye forever in using flaked food, or does it still have it's uses?

 

[GaryE]

I dislike pellets, but I like flake if I am going to use 'non live' food. A lot of my fish are surface feeders.

Pellets are for the old Cory group. Otherwise, I don't use them. Flake, quickly crushed and dropped, in gets eaten. I've never seen fish turn away from them as you described unless I overfed. I've never presoaked.

It might be different if I kept large fish, but for the tiny ones I like, it's flake or home produced.

 

[Rusty_Shackleford]

Absolutely still use flake food. New Life Spectrum flake food to be exact.
Many of my tetras have mouths that are too small to take pellets without grinding them up into smaller pieces, so I use flake food often for them.

 

[Fishmanic]

I drop in ground up flake food for my smaller sized fish. I then push down with my fingers on the surface of the water and some flakes will start sinking. Then the floating flakes gradually drop as well.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

I use omega one flake for my water column feeders, alternated with northfin nano bits. Sometimes I steal some fruit flies from the Badgerling's Betta culture and thrown them in too. The fish don't seem to mind; they'll eat whatever fits in their mouths.

 

[jaylach]

For me it would depend on the species of fish. If such as guppies or many in the tetra family I'd use flakes. For such as most cichlids I would not.

 

[Magnum Man]

I never really fed flake foods, however recently I've made up my own blend of brine flakes, worm flakes, and vegi flakes, I blend them, and mill them in my mortar and pestal along with other dried foods, and feed that one day per week

 

[MattW]

I also mix foods. My 60L tank is fed a 2x flake and 3x micro pellet combo, also milled in a pestle and mortar, so my smaller ricefish can eat it.

 

[anewbie]

I do in some of my aquariums. I mostly feed pellets or ground up pellets but in the large aquariums with larger fish i use larger pellets for the 'big' fishes' and flakes for the smaller fishes and to be honest most of the fishes really love to chase the flakes down - at least in my 600.

For the smaller aquariums the pellets are ground up with a coffee grinder and the food is fairly small size.

 

[AJ356]

Absolutely still use flake food. New Life Spectrum flake food to be exact.
Many of my tetras have mouths that are too small to take pellets without grinding them up into smaller pieces, so I use flake food often for them.

I don't seem to be able to get this brand easily in the UK. Always heard good things about it

 

[AJ356]

I use omega one flake for my water column feeders, alternated with northfin nano bits. Sometimes I steal some fruit flies from the Badgerling's Betta culture and thrown them in too. The fish don't seem to mind; they'll eat whatever fits in their mouths.

Thanks is another brand I can't seem to source in the UK.

 

[AJ356]

I never really fed flake foods, however recently I've made up my own blend of brine flakes, worm flakes, and vegi flakes, I blend them, and mill them in my mortar and pestal along with other dried foods, and feed that one day per week

I have a dream that one day I'll be culturing lots of live food and making my own frozen foods as well

 

[Aquatopia]

I feed a mix of the different Tetra Pro crisps, not flakes, but a similar thing. I also feed Tetra Prima mini granules, Hikari Algae wafers, a mix of frozen foods (bloodworm, mysis, brine shrimp, daphnia, chopped cockle, gammarus) and Courgette (Zucchini to you Americans).

I believe a good variety is important for the fishes health and appetite. Also the commercial flakes (or crisps) and granules add vitamins and minerals that are just not in the other foods.

 

[plebian]

I stopped using flake food because every brand I tried left an oily film on the water's surface. I've never had a problem with surface feeders using slowly sinking pellets, or with small fish, using micro pellets. In fact, my blue neons actually seem to prefer the larger Tetra granules even though they have to break them up before they can eat them.

 

[fishorama]

I use Ken's earthworm flakes & Omega Super Color flakes for both schooly rasboras & sewellia (hillstream) loaches. I drop flakes into the HOB filter returns so it goes all over the tank. Everyone gets some.

Most of my fish don't eat small pellets or flakes well. I feed various larger pellets for bottom feeders.