Prepared foods required for long life?

[SDguy]

Just wondering what peoples' thoughts and experiences are regarding fish nutrition. Specifically, fish that have a staple diet of prepared foods like pellets (or frozen versions) vs fish that only eat frozen and live foods.

I have a marginalis and collare butterflyfish that will only eat raw shrimp, scallop, mysis (hikari, PE) and live blackworms. Will this diet provide everything they need, long term? I mean long... like 10+ years. How much of a role does their natural diet play? I would guess, judging by the maginalis' mouth, it doesn't get a whole lot of fish flesh, algae, etc in it's diet in the wild (outside of shrimp gut contenets) so how critical are these things? Are whole foods like the PE mysis especially critical in these instances?

 

[peasofme]

this is why people use selcon and other things.

 

[SDguy]

this is why people use selcon and other things.

People use Selcon as a vitamin and HUFA supplement, since that's what it is.

I'm thinking broader than that. If I eat nothing but roasted turkey legs day in and day out, I'm not sure a vitamin supplement is gonna help me in the long run.

 

[aquaph8]

I feel its not only what they are eating in the wild but also what their food is eating. Their prey is most likely getting a better diet too. So while these fish dont eat a lot of mysis in the wild we gotta do what we can to make up for all the variables we dont know. Ive always felt too much of one thing or another is bad too. A well rounded diet wether it be unnatural or not is the way to go IMO. Some fish we can only do what we can though, all we can do is our best.