Rod’s Food
Rod’s Original and now other blended frozen fish foods have become quite popular in recent years. The food is certainly good quality. I think the ingredients are rinsed to remove the preservatives that other foods might include. I emailed him a few years back and he wrote that he uses whole mysis shrimp, scallop, oyster, and now, Euphausia krill, plus some common human vegetables, like raw peas.
Yet Rod’s Foods are expensive. At $20 for a 6-ounce pack, his Original food equates to $53 a pound. Compare this to other sources of nutrients for fish:
• Purina’s Aquarium Pond pellets in a feed bag is only 32 cents per pound (grain meal)
• Kordon Frozen Brine is $4.70/lb
• Frozen Mysis shrimp from Hakari costs from $12 to 34 per pound
In fact, the average of eight frozen fish foods is $19.50 per pound. In the grocery store, raw red salmon fillets are available for a tenth of his price. Compare Rod’s to human foods that average less than $5 per pound, including oysters, which can cost as much as $20/lb.
You can quickly see that a messy DIY afternoon with several pounds of thawed human fish food, raw green vegetables and a blender is well worth the effort.
For extra high protein and fat percentages, consider Aqua Select FD Plankton. This is freeze-dried Pacifica plankton with 70% protein, but at $151/lb. Or use Argent Cyclop-eeze. This is a wonderful reef food. It is powdery, freeze-dried decapods with 60% protein and 34% fat, but at $205/lb!