I need a fish nutrition EXPERT!

Luckily, the technology and knowledge keeps growing every year, so we are able to keep more delicate specimens then folks could 10 years ago, but we still have a lot to learn.

FWIW, from everything I've read, Clown Tang's are impossible to keep in captivity, but mine has been going strong for over two years, it's one of the most active healthy fish in my tank...

BTW, that's a hell of a fish list you have. How in the world are you able to keep an Undulate with all those other fish - the last one I had was quite possibly the meanest fish in the world, he would kill anything I put in there within a day, and if for some reason I put a snail or hermit in there, it wouldn't hit the sand before it ate it!
 
Haha, good question. I have the Undulate in a 30 hex with 2 other damsels. He chases them all day but can't catch them, so It's good exercise. The picasso is also very aggressive, and he stays in the sump, but he is no match for the undulated even thought the undulated is blind in one eye. I got him for free from a local trade, because the guy was breaking down the tank he was in, so I said "i'll take him I guess". He probably became blind from fighting with one of the other huge triggers this guy had in a FOWLR including a queen, niger, picasso, and clown, all bigger than the undulate.
 
More simply put, there just hasn't been enough need (IMO) for someone to go out and actually do a breakdown of what marine fish truly specifically need as far as nutrition is concerned. Why? Because there really isn't money in that if feeding them what we have been simply "works". Just trying to be helpful here. If some Google searching (which I am sure you have done) doesn't get you so much as a link to a research study in some science journal somewhere, chances are the data simply doesn't exist. Another great place to look if you live near a public university is at their library and skim, through research articles in their collection which will probably be pretty vast.
 
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Sadly I've forgotten more than I can remember about fish nutrition. However, I did own a frozen fish food company for several years and studied fish nutrition heavily for a long time leading up to and during that time.

From what you're listing nothing stands out as being out of place or bad. Well, other than the fact that they're calling something "Absorbic Acid"...

If they're claiming the food targets red pigments in fish then there are most likely added carotenoids. Carotenoids are one of the 4 main groups of pigments and are responsible for the red coloration in fish. Unlike most other pigments they can't be synthesized by the fish and they must get it from their diet or be absorbed in some way. Astaxanthin is an ingredient that shows up from time to time as an ingredient with this purpose in mind... Astaxanthin is often used in commercial fish meals and is the reason farm raised salmon has pink or orange flesh.

Lastly, keep in mind that most gel based foods I've seen aren't much more than basic fish meal and "binders". One of the advantages of a gel food is how easy it is to add things such as medicines, vitamins, whatever, to a food easily. Beyond that I can't think of any good reason to feed a gel based food over a quality flake food, especially considering how messy they can be.
 
Peter, thank you for shedding some light on this for me. The price of this food was $20 for about 8.oz which mixes 50/50 with water, so it will last a good while, however I cannot see feeding this as a primary food if their are no obvious benefits. I will use it for supplementation, and for adding selcon to every now and then.
 
Chris27 said:
Luckily, the technology and knowledge keeps growing every year, so we are able to keep more delicate specimens then folks could 10 years ago, but we still have a lot to learn.

FWIW, from everything I've read, Clown Tang's are impossible to keep in captivity, but mine has been going strong for over two years, it's one of the most active healthy fish in my tank...

BTW, that's a hell of a fish list you have. How in the world are you able to keep an Undulate with all those other fish - the last one I had was quite possibly the meanest fish in the world, he would kill anything I put in there within a day, and if for some reason I put a snail or hermit in there, it wouldn't hit the sand before it ate it!
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There really isn't anything we can keep now that we could not 10 years ago. At least not that I can think of off the top of my head. Also, clown tangs are very difficult, but hardly impossible. Really it comes down to getting lucky enough to get a disease free specimen that adapts well to captivity and eats well.
 
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Here is a decent read from NLS.
http://nlsfishfood.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=29&Itemid=63

From the above article.
"Many hobbyists seem to get hung up on the protein percentages that are shown on fish food labels, without truly understanding exactly what those numbers mean.
The protein percent on a fish food label doesn't really tell you anything about the quality of the protein. The value of protein is directly related to the amino acid content, such as Arginine, Histidine, Isoleucine, Leucine, Lysine, Methionine, Phenylalanine, Threonine, Trytophan, and Valine, which essentially are the building blocks for muscle and growth. The protein percent shown on a label doesn't tell you how that protein was processed, or if it's even in a form that your fish can properly digest and utilize. Unless that protein can be fully digested by your fish, the crude protein percent on a label becomes somewhat meaningless."
 
Peter Eichler said:
There really isn't anything we can keep now that we could not 10 years ago. At least not that I can think of off the top of my head. Also, clown tangs are very difficult, but hardly impossible. Really it comes down to getting lucky enough to get a disease free specimen that adapts well to captivity and eats well.
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Ok, maybe not for the professionals, but us Joe Blow hobbyists are lucky to have folks like you around making it easier for us! Better foods and vitamin supplements, water purification, protein skimmers, refugiums and the like are all things that the normal hobbyist just didn't have years and years ago. And lets not forget coppper and hypo - whoever figured those out should be given a nobel prize from the aquarium community.

I'm not saying it was impossible, just saying that the folks who have dedicated their time to bettering the hobby have make keeping a SW tank almost easy.
 
wdt2000 said:
Here is a decent read from NLS.
http://nlsfishfood.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=29&Itemid=63

From the above article.
"Many hobbyists seem to get hung up on the protein percentages that are shown on fish food labels, without truly understanding exactly what those numbers mean.
The protein percent on a fish food label doesn't really tell you anything about the quality of the protein. The value of protein is directly related to the amino acid content, such as Arginine, Histidine, Isoleucine, Leucine, Lysine, Methionine, Phenylalanine, Threonine, Trytophan, and Valine, which essentially are the building blocks for muscle and growth. The protein percent shown on a label doesn't tell you how that protein was processed, or if it's even in a form that your fish can properly digest and utilize. Unless that protein can be fully digested by your fish, the crude protein percent on a label becomes somewhat meaningless."
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Thanks for this link :dance:
Another thing to consider about proteins is the animal's ability to synthesize one protein from another. I cannot comment much further than this because, again, I am not aware of any documentation of this in the marine fish world. Would love to broaden my horizons if I could get my hands on some such data though! :bounce3:
Frankly this is not just limited to protein composition in feeds, and that is the point I was attempting to get across. Things can look much better on paper than they actually are in the real world.
 
Ok, so now that we have decided that, lets get to the point......

Why doesn't the hobbyist who is worried about having the purest water form, not also worried about knowing what they are putting in their tank everyday in the form of fish food.....
 
baldwinaquaman said:
Ok, so now that we have decided that, lets get to the point......

Why doesn't the hobbyist who is worried about having the purest water form, not also worried about knowing what they are putting in their tank everyday in the form of fish food.....
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Good question. I believe the answer lies less in the fact that we are not worried and more in the fact that specific data simply doesn't exist. We have figured out what sorts of things these animals eat in the wild and those are the sorts of things that tend to be incorporated into feeds. If an animal doesn't do well in a system, we tend to say that it is "impossible to keep" when in reality I feel a large part (if not all) of the problem lies in the fact that we don't know exactly what it needs.

I do see you care very much. To be blunt, do you have the ability and means to figure out what specifically your clown tang needs as far as nutrition to keep him alive? Likely not. If something works, unless there is a large market for keeping that animal alive and efficient (think livestock such as beef cattle, swine, etc.), or unless someone very rich decides to fund research for it, we probably will have to wait a very long time before we get any specific information. You can get the specifics on any of these animals I mentioned in massive detail (and there are STILL studies being done coming up with new data we didn't know before) because feeding these creatures is a multi-billion dollar industry.

The fact of the matter is that if we blend in all of the things we thing our fishes eat, we have a pretty decent success rate. I can't really think of a whole lot of fish out there that people want to keep but have simply been unable to. IMO much of the reasearch that companies put into feeding fish is more for them to brag about how they have X amino acid in Y concentration in Z kg of food. Numbers like this look amazing to the consumer because we are sold on science, and numbers seem scientific and wonderful.

On land, for example, a fairly common animal that we just can't keep alive for any length of time in captivity is the moose, even with feeding virtually the same diet that it would get in the wild as far as we know. It is theorized that there is a vital amino acid that the moose cannot synthesize itself that it obtains from a plant source. Now I am guessing that more time/money has gone into figuring out the moose than any one fish in the sea (I could be wrong here, not downplaying fish or anything), yet we still have not come any farther in succeeding.
 
I think you're burdening yourself with something that is a nonissue for the majority of the fish you have. I've never heard of a case where fish are dying because the common food offered by the aquarium market aren't nutritious enough. I believe others factors like stress, aggression, and captivity tolerance are far greater issues in keeping fish.

Like others have said, I think the data you are asking for is going to very hard to come by, and probably non-existent. And the reason for that would probably be because "if it ain't broken don't fix it". Food nutrition is not an issue in this hobby.
 
If you don't always strive for something more, you'll never have it. There is always advancement to be made in this hobby. Factors such as stress, aggression, and captivity tolerance also need more looking into, I never said they didn't, however this thread is for advancement of fish nutrition, as posted.

Maybe you should post a thread for those other things, and the advancement thereof, instead of trying to talk me into settling for something present.
 
I do not, however, I do know of a lot of people who have tangs with HLLE, which they do not know the cause, which may be inadequate feeding.
 
blennymower said:
Food nutrition is not an issue in this hobby.
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I wouldn't make those claims myself. There are plenty of creatures that have a longer life expectancy in the tank than in the wild, but there are that many more that do not. Of course other things factor into this, but it would be foolish to think that nutrition NEVER does. The fact of the matter is there are many animals, I believe fish included, that you or I would consider "fat and happy" as we like to say in the hobby, that end up croaking for "no apparent reason" or that will suddenly start to deteriorate. I am willing to bet that in many of those cases nutrition is a key player. Animals can look great or even be overweight/obese and still be malnourished.
 
Gel based diets are pretty common in public aquariums. Purina has been making a commercial zoological aquatic diet for quite a while. Personally Im not much of a fan of gel food in non-commercial filtration systems as it seems to me that it tends to break up quite a bit during feedings and can cloud the water.

That being said, they have several advantages. You can add in pretty much any medication that wont get cooked by the high temp water you need to add to get it to gel right. You can also add your own supplements, think things like pulverized nori (hooray magic bullet), baby vitamins, bone meal, whatever you really want to get to the animals. My guess is that there has been a bunch of asthaxanthin added to the food to promote red coloration. Ive added that to gel before. It used to be hard to come by and really expensive but I think its easier these days. If you want just buy some plain gel, and you can build whatever nutritional profile you want by adding supplements yourself and it may be cheaper anyway.
 
By the way, I am definitely not an expert, I just thought it was an interesting conversation and wanted to add my 2 cents....
 
StrikeThree said:
Gel based diets are pretty common in public aquariums. Purina has been making a commercial zoological aquatic diet for quite a while. Personally Im not much of a fan of gel food in non-commercial filtration systems as it seems to me that it tends to break up quite a bit during feedings and can cloud the water.

That being said, they have several advantages. You can add in pretty much any medication that wont get cooked by the high temp water you need to add to get it to gel right. You can also add your own supplements, think things like pulverized nori (hooray magic bullet), baby vitamins, bone meal, whatever you really want to get to the animals. My guess is that there has been a bunch of asthaxanthin added to the food to promote red coloration. Ive added that to gel before. It used to be hard to come by and really expensive but I think its easier these days. If you want just buy some plain gel, and you can build whatever nutritional profile you want by adding supplements yourself and it may be cheaper anyway.
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That is interesting to hear. I wonder if Purina has done any of the research or case studies on nutrients in fish before. THAT would be a company that can afford it. I think I will look more into that on Monday.
 
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