Freeze Dried Food Nutritional Value

Hi guys, I was just wondering your opinions on the nutritional value of freeze-dried foods?

I had a recent conversation with JohnH on another topic re the nutritional value of frozen foods - he was saying that because these foods are often let defrost during transit and before being stacked on shelves they lose a lot of their nutritional value (thats what I got from it, correct me if I am wrong John!! ).

I was just wonderng if freeze-dried food is any good? I know that live food always wins and am starting to get into setting it up (managed to hatch brine shrimp for the first time over the weekend - go me!! ) but just want to explore other options apart from flakes and pellets.

Any opinions welcome!

This is always a good question, and the final conclusion (in my opinion) is more about balance rather than ‘better’.

In captive conditions, especially in the home, it is often difficult to find one source of food that is ideal for the fish: what one type lacks, another may make up for…..hence balance is better than ‘better’.

Frozen foods can lose some of their nutritional value with time and with transport.
Prepared & Blended Dried foods (eg Tetra flakes) will do the same.
Freeze dried food will do the same.
Gram for Gram, you may find that many live foods simply do not compete for certain macro-nutrients with the modern high quality dried foods.

I have found that most of my fish turn their noses up at the freeze dried food…..but it is their choice. Funnily enough, I also have killifish who prefer flake food to frozen or live food; I have a lungfish who would kill for JBL NovaTab (and that is quite expensive to feed)…and refuses nice pieces of fish; and Polypterus that go mad for spirulina flake…..and one marbled angelfish that will not touch anything other than frozen bloodworm (like as if any of its ancestors have seen the wilds in the past 50 years)

In the wild, if a fish had a diet of say daphnia then the amount may be a constant and massive supply (if only during certain seasons). So, even if gram for gram the macro-nutritional value is lower than a good quality prepared food….the fish can simply over indulge at will.
That is not always practical in a home fish tank.

If live food is ‘gut-loaded’ then by choice of the right food for the feeder food and the right feeder food themselves (ie some feeder foods are better at being gut-loaded than others), you can double the ‘goodness’ of live food.

This idea of gut-loading the feeder food is encouraged for reptile keepers.

There are a number of different nutritional parts in food that ‘go out of date’ at different rates and under different conditions.

There is, as with human ‘healthy’ eating, a temptation to focus upon one aspect and ignore the rest.
Eg there is a belief that vitamin C is good for you. I’d say that if some is VITAL then it can not be called ‘good for you’.
The problem of getting into the notion of a vital component being good for you often leads to the misconception of more being better….not really so.

For our cars, oil is vital to the engine rather than being ‘good for the engine’…..but if you decide to put in 10 litres instead of 5 then you’ll see how “more is better” is not quite true.
Sitting down to watch TV and relax with being pampered is not vital….but it may be good for you.

Hence, a balanced diet is better than trying to get the ‘better’ diet.

Without getting too deep into this topic, I feed my fish freeze-dried daphnia and tubifex worms once a week as a treat/something different food which they readily accept. It's certainly not doing them any harm anyway. As Ian says, a balanced diet is best.

Dave

john
you could soak them in fishvits or jbl do a liquid vitamin [cant for the life of me think of the name of it]
or what about spirulinna powder and water
john

JohnH wrote:

Good suggestions John - but you know me, anything to save money!
I was thinking of the baby food and multivitamin capsules as they would be much cheaper than the aquarium stuff.
I'm not really 'tight' with money - merely 'careful'...
John

john i love your turn of phrase merely careful must use that myself sometime..
anyway the cheapest forms of food i use are live food cultures i've grown on(thanks puddlefish) i must admit i do also use freeze dried and frozen foods as well but they are more a once a week treat, things like krill, earthworm, daphina and bloodworm i always have on hand freezedried, but also use frozen mysis, cyclops, bloodworm etc and my fish eat them with gusto, nutrient wise i'm unsure how much better one is to the other, but if the fish eat them nd are healthy then i'm happy, but to be honest i do prefer my live cultures to prepared foods as i know what the have been fed, and by feeding things like microworms etc with naturose, fish vitamins etc, i know when they are fed to my fish they will benefit from it
just my 2 cents

Thanks for all the replies guys, very interesting reading. I might just give it a go and see how they like it. Have heard that the bloodworms can cause allergic reactions in some people so may give them a miss!!

Might have a look at the 'nutrition-adders' John & John were talking about as well. JohnH - if you do find a recipe that works using the baby food and multivitamin capsules please let me know. I am on a cheap DIY buzz at the moment with this recession that everyone keeps talking about!

Does anyone know if Seahorse have freeze-dried food? Will probably be heading there this weekend for some provisions.
Bill

Any food has a potential to give allergic reactions……you never know until you come into contact with it.

I can’t remember if seahorse have freeze-dried foods, but maybe they do as I may have bought mine from them.

Baby-food…..I haven’t used it for fish, but I do use it for direct feeding to reptiles.
I would avoid any apricot stuff though (well for reptiles anyway as it is toxic).
If the baby food has too much spinach or rhubarb then I’d also avoid it for fish purposes. I’m just trying to think what else might be in baby foods….but my grandchild is not yet born and so I’m not in the general baby-food market.

I have found that over the years dried prepared foods have become very good. In some fish, I’m thinking larger cichlids such as discus….the vitamin requirements are quite critical and much of the dried food from the 70s and 80s was not up to scratch in preventing hole-in-the-head, and so I’d always have to dose with additional vitamins.
I’m not finding such a problem with modern foods so long as they are stored correctly.

eSHa also do a supplement….eSHa Optima. I use that (as it is cheap).

Of course there is always a debate about “nutritional value”…..some of that is based upon % protein etc etc. But life is not always about % protein. A food that is low in useful protein or useful carbs etc may actually be useful within the feeding balance as it provides useful roughage.
Too rich a food continually fed to some species of fish (and animals in general) can be detrimental to health.

ian

Kealan Doyle from Seahorse Aquariums did an excellent presentation a few months ago about fish nutrition and showed results of research on the nutritional values of various foods / food types. I will see if we can get a summary for the forum.


Daragh

Daragh_Owens wrote:

Kealan Doyle from Seahorse Aquariums did an excellent presentation a few months ago about fish nutrition and showed results of research on the nutritional values of various foods / food types. I will see if we can get a summary for the forum.


Daragh

That would be great Daragh. For a relatively novice fishkeeper like me its hard to know whats good, bad or indifferent. Thats why I love this forum, can get great info from people who know.