Best food there is

Paul B

Premium Member
Now I know that I have always said that the best all around food for our animals is whole fish followed by blackworms, but I lied. :(
Live blackworms is actually the third best food.

The absolute best food for our animals, bar none, not even if you go to Mars is Salmon eggs.
Salmon happens to be one of the healthiest foods we as humans can eat because of the Omega 3 oils and other essential fish oils,
But an exceptionally large percentage of that oil is in their eggs.
Yes Salmon Cavior is relatively cheap (as far as fish food goes) and available in Asian markets. It is sold fresh so I don't know if you could get it in the mid west. If anyone lives in the mid west, let me know if you can get it there.
It sells here in NY for almost $40.00 a pound which sounds expensive but it is only about a quarter of what frozen mysis sells for. I just bought 4 ounces for under $10.00 which will last me months.
Each fish only needs one egg which are about a quarter inch across and brimming with salt water fish oil.
My bubble corals, cup corals and any other coral with a mouth just gobbled them up. My bangai cardinal ate four of them and can't hardly close his mouth. They must be target fed.
The large hermit crab attempted to tear the bubble apart in an attempt to steal an egg but I am a little bigger than him and I wrestled it away from him. He was sulking in a corner so I gave him his own salmon egg.
These can only last in the refrigerator maybe two days and must be frozen. I put them in those little plastic trays that mysis come in after they are empty and freeze them.
Asian markets also sell a much smaller fish egg for half that price so depending on the size of your fish you can custom feed these things. I only give this to them a couple of times a week as I do blackworms because they are very rich.
They are even better than worms because besides the oil they supply calcium and every other thing a fish would need. After all, a salmon egg is essentially a compressed Salmon.

:D
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My blackworms do reproduce but not enough so I buy them. I use the worms like the eggs as a suppliment. Don't use these eggs as a staple food, they are much too rich and will overflow your skimmer no matter how many you add.
My 100 gallon reef only gets about 5 eggs once or twice a week.
Think of them as a vitamin pill more than a food.
 
Thanks Paul. I probably need to start using blackworms. Will look for the salmon eggs but I live in Illinois so they may not be available.
 
Paul ,

Thanks for the tip!

I already use smelt eggs often ( you can get them frozen at any Asian market ).

In addition, I spike my hikari pellet food with Omega-3 Oil.
For the Oil, I use them same supplement I feed myself every morning from the health store.

I just poke a hole in the pill and squeeze it over the pellets in a cup.

Stu
 
Back home in socal we used salmon eggs as bait for rainbow trout, we got them at any bait shop but they were suspended in a gooey preservative, and the shells were opaque, never clear like the ones you showed, no sure it this method of keeping them negates the benifits in any way but they would last forever at room temps
 
Are the eggs sold in Asian markets preserved in brine or colored?

I'm in Flushing once a week and see a bewildering variety of fresh, even live seafood.
 
The eggs I buy are fresh, not in brine or colored but I rinse them well because the slime they are in coats the skimmer and causes it to overflow. That is greatly decreased if they are rinsed well
 
Fear of getting eggs with something added has prevented me from feeding them to my fish.

Not that I have not tried asking about it, but the people at the markets I go to are not very helpful. Even when I've had someone chinese ask for me, we can't get a straight answer.

How can you tell if the eggs are fresh and untreated?
 
Since you are in New York I am assuming you are buying Canadian Roe. Are there no other ingredients? Every type of salmon roe I have seen has been preserved with salt? They are fresh but have had some salt added to prevent rapid spoiling.

Are they in a tin or a glass jar?
 
Since you are in New York I am assuming you are buying Canadian Roe. Are there no other ingredients? Every type of salmon roe I have seen has been preserved with salt? They are fresh but have had some salt added to prevent rapid spoiling.

Are they in a tin or a glass jar?
 
Fear of getting eggs with something added has prevented me from feeding them to my fish.

They are sold in a food store so I would imagine if there is anything added it could not be too bad as it is edible for humans.
The eggs I buy are labeled "product of the USA.
They are in a plastic container and are fresh. No other ingredients other than Salmon eggs are listed
 
Paul,

I haven't been in this hobby or on this site for very long, but I have learned to take your opinions very seriously. So, I will try and find some salmon roe.

Do you think added salt would be bad for the fish? I have found a few online vendors of caviar which sell lightly salted fresh salmon roe.
 
I would imagine if it's only salt and it's fresh it would be OK. Just get roe for human consumption and not bait.
I find these eggs fantastic for feeding LPS corals like bubbles.
Don't go crazy with these things, just a couple a week, not as a staple food and rinse them well or you will be sorry.
 
The Bait salmon eggs are preserved with Formaldehyde and Died so the fish can see them easier.

Dont feed those to the tank.

The frozen smelt eggs from the Asian markets are supposed to be perfectly clean, BUT I have heard that some "frozen fish" are sprayed with phosphates as a preservative.

So occasional use of phosphate preserved foods is OK, I would not suggest it long term or you could build up phosphates.

Stu
 
I think most seafood is given a nice rinsing with trisodiumphosphate. Its a natural preservative, and gives the food a nice full look. Soak seafood in RO water for a while, then drain it before you feed.
 
MrPike,

Soaking seafood in water prior to feeding is a bad idea. Think about it, you doing that to rinse off the trisodium phosphate - it also washed out most of the water soluble vitamins and some of the Omega 3's. We had our diets analyzed by a professional zoo and aquarium diet consultant, and the biggest change they asked us to make was to stop all water thawing of food. We now put the food in plastic bags and then soak that in a cold water bath. Note - this wasn't just them telling us not to water thaw the food, we actually sent them our diets on an "as fed" basis - just like was going into our tanks, and their lab tests confirmed that the nutrients were leaching out. IIRC, the study cost around $10,000 - so we kind of hope it was accurate!

Jay
 
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