One of life's little mysteries, I suppose

This would be hard to quantify John as many different flake foods are made with different ingredients much the same with our foods, take branding for Baked Beans for example Heinz or otherwise. LOL
I think its a matter of personal taste and what your fish have been used to.
Most flake foods are made up with Proteins and not all proteins are the same. These proteins can be derrived at by using various ingredients. I think Tetra mainly use fish meal, shrimp and potato as their source but Nutrafin use fishmeal alongside earthworm as their main ingredients.
As I said its hard to quantify wither its this or one of the many other additives that make them turn their noses up at certain foods.
I always used Tetramin and found it more liked by my fish than Aquarian brand, again why, it has to be down to the raw materials used in manufacturing.
If it's any consolation I prefer Fillet Steak to Beefburgers any day.
A breakdown of the Guaranteed Analysis for your opposing flake foods contents is as follows.

Tetra Min
Minimum Crude Protein 46%
Minimum Crude Fat 8%
Minimum Crude Fiber 2%
Maximum Moisture 6%
Minimum Phosphorus 1.3%


Nutrafin
Minimum Crude Protein 44%
Minimum Crude Fat 5%
Minimum Crude Fiber 2%
Maximum Moisture 8%
Minimum Phosphorus 0.9%

Again there are many, many other factors involved here, so getting at a definitive answer as to the actual reasons why fish reject certain foods as opposed to others may prove to be a more difficult than one would imagine.
Obviously these big companies have labs, with many fish tanks, filled with many different species of fish. The fish in those lab tanks are all happily munching away on their specific product and they all claim that their food is the best (well why wouldn't they) but to my knowledge no one has ever compared these companies actual fish side by side if an identical feeding regime (different brands) were to be adopted.
Back in the old days we didn't have as much of a choice as we do today.
Its hard to make a bloomin choice when we go to the LFS.
Hmmmmm. do I buy staple, Max, Colour, Colour Plus, flake or granules, floating wafers, sinking wafers or pellets:(

ATB
C

Uncanny, always use tetra pro as flake, and bought Nutrafin flake, seems lighter and larger flakes.
Some wouldn't eat it until they got hungrier that usual with the schedule. I'd be surprised if this was to continue for long John.

I thought it was just the thicker oilier Tetra flakes they prefer and were a little.. well disgusted at what I was trying to feed em. No problems now though.





Mark

Ive had the same occur with the Aquarian flake foods. I used TetraMin but whenever the Aquarian flake is put in. its spat out. Similarly Ive noticed in another tank of mine that the red flakes do not get eaten.Anyone able to suss that out ?

Gavin

Hi,
Its just gotta do with what they use in making the food, similarly i normally use some brand name flake, but i ran out and the local lfs hadnt any so i bought cheaper flake, they did not want it at all.
All animals including us get used tio a type of food, Irish love spuds 2 veg and meat for dinner, would we eat a really hot curry with the same vigour, well i wouldnt.
Similarly large fish get used to live food and it is hard to ween them off it.
All fish food manufacturers have their own recipes and they can differ quite a bit.
Regards,
Denis

i find that there is a huge difference in the quality in food for cichlids,i feed my cichlids a range of pellets such as hikari cichlid gold,new life spectrum cichlasoma and tetra doromin, there has being great progress in food in recent years,i did some research myself on different foods and my results where that overall nls was the best for bringing out colours it did lack the growth i was looking for and alot of my fish just wont eat nls as i think its to hard for them,tetra doromin is good for a all rounder but it can be a bit messy but great as a change of food which i would recommend,hikari imo is the best all rounder because it has garlic in it which will make any fish go crazy for it and it has the right texture,the thing i find with all foods is that the ash content is on avg.is around 10 percent,i dont know what this is,

Its very simple to add a few clove's of garlic to a tub of fish flake.Should entice the fish also.

Gavin

how many cloves would one add, and to what size tub? ive sliced a quarter up and stirred it up with a chopped prawn then removed the slices, just to give it flavor, the lads enjoyed it

but then your adding moisture which will rot the flake/pellet,you need to add it just before you add the food

Ive often left a clove of garlic in the tub full time,the flakes absorb some of it and its good for the fish. In terms of the ash content.......that is scales and bones as far as I know.

Gavin

i must try it soo,i heard of the ash being scales and bones ect but i have emails from food makers all giving different answers

Well the lower the ash content the better the food. Ash is in alot of different foods, catfood even!

As a maker of several varieties of dry fish food I feel the need to help explain. Ash content is the total mineral content of the food. Foods need vitamins and minerals to enhance the color and growth of fish. I use low temperatures for making fish food (190-200 degrees). Heat will not destroy minerals but it will destroy vitamins. Also the low heat in the process allows less trace minerals to be lost. Actual mineral content is a specific list of elements like calcium, magnesium, etc. You may see calcium and phosphorus listed on the fish food label in percentages because their content is important to the fishes health overall. I use them in amounts of .09% to 1.3% so that percentage is not included in the ash content. The total ash content in a few of my foods is 12%. No one has ever told me their fish did not take the food at first offering. However, one must realize you cannot expect a cory catfish to take a floating fry food. That type of fish would need a sinking food. Foods can be general or quite specific.

The best way to add garlic without adding moisture to an existing food is to use pure garlic powder. Make sure it is not garlic salt.

Omega 3,6, and 9 fatty acids are important anti-oxidants that promote good general health in all fish. 200 mg per pound is minimum in my opinion.


To finish my thought, fish need protein and fat as well. However, young fish need higher amounts for growth. Adult fish will have a greater chance of developing heart, liver, and kidney disorders if given high amounts of fat for long periods of time. That is one reason why a varied diet is so important.

I actually do test foods in two tanks of the same types of fish to compare. It's too soon to tell for sure, but preliminary findings show a faster growth and reproduction rate in Endlers with a new food I'm testing now. The protein is derived from a single cell bacteria. When tests are completed, this food will have no fish meal or plant protein content at all.

I hope this helps and I do not look like a know-it-all.

Interesting stuff, we need so called know-it-alls mate:)

I use powder garlic myself but only with veg upon boiling, raw veg are just pinned in. I am not aware or have checked in detail the content of my foods. I should maybe. I have noticed with the tetra crisps when they hit the water they bleed off oil immeniately, the Nutrafin Max doesn't do this so much.

I put in a few different foods, 3-4 times daily, would they anticipate the tetra flakes arriving and this is why they ignore the new ones.

A good example is my quarentine, serverl new fish in there and my over amorous molly I've had since day one. He has always got tetra but the newbies had three days of it only, they all ate the new flake where as the molly wasn't interested, he'd swim about checking flakes and spitting them out and waiting for another drop of tetra flakes. This lasted two feeding periods, the Molly is eating Nutrafin max too now without a problem.

Mark

Very interesting Rjb
Don't be concerned about comming across as a know it all.
These sort of replies are very, very welcome
Thanks for taking the time to post
Regards
C

ah yes, tonight ive bought not one but two foods tetra pro, and frozen bloodworm and the ignorant little gits turned their noses up at both and now i've to vaccum out the dam stuff.

cheers fish, and after all the love i show you

Nothing like a litle hunger to improve the apetite:) Mine have a real taste for cherry shrimp not and hte rainbow are refusing flake after eating 70 80 small Cherry shrimp in the last few weeks, well I'm all outa shrimp so eat or starve:)



Mark

For anyone with large chichlids as a treat once a week or so I used to feed my Jack Dempseys and nicraguense with earth worms. I would sit them in milk for five minutes and then rinse them off before dropping them in the tank one at a time. You have to be carefull not to allow the worms to reach the gravel as they can dig into the substrate and rot. (hope I am not teaching my granny to suck eggs.)

wats the theory behind the milk?

Apparently they readily ingest the milk and it is thicker than water so flushes out any dirt etc inside them.
May be an old wives tale but my dad swore by it

I used to purge earthworm/tubifex with milk, not sure if it worked either but it was a trait that was handed down by old aquarists of yesteryear.
Regards
C

yeah I think My dad picked it up from Geebee.
Not sure I spelt the name of the shop right. The old man was a class act. First place I ever saw an Oscar eating out of somebodies hand.

Wet tissue paper purges them also.
Gavin

Ok, not sure if this would work but to clean French Snails intestines for Human consumption, they are fed white flour, it pushes Faeces out and replaces them with flour...

Kev.