[anitsirk92]

I have two Petco babies that are growing nicely. I've been feeding them baby brine shrimp and a bloodworm treat once a week. I currently have Aqueon Betta pellets (which I know are just okay) so I was thinking of getting a better brand. I know a lot of users on here say that Omega One food and New Life Spectrum are the best. However, I read that Omega One pellets have a pesticide called ethoxyquin in it which may be harmful for fish. Also I read a lot of complaints that Omega One pellets don't float so I don't think my bettas will catch them before they sink to the gravel. Also I have read that the New Life Spectrum betta pellets are often too big for bettas to consume. Can someone please give me some insight on this? Am I looking at the right items? If you could post links to the best types of food that would be awesome.

 

[lilnaugrim]

I've never heard that about Omega having pesticides in it! Since...you know, it's meant for fish, I do have a hard time believing that one but about the floating thing, you just feed one at a time and they won't have any issue catching it. They don't sink right away unless you literally throw them at the water like I do to make them sink.

NLS has so many different pellet sizes, if you're worried about the size, get the Small Fish formula which is the .5 mm size. If you look at their website in fact all of their fish foods are from the same formula, just different sizes is all. You can also easiliy chop up or grind the Betta formula to make it smaller. When pellets are too big I either slice them with my fingernail or I pick up a bunch in the container and grind them between my fingers against themselves, this makes them smaller but with the Small Fish formula, you won't have to do that.

I honestly love NLS over Omega and I've used both, my fish seem to go for the NLS more but I'm sure if they were starved they wouldn't really care as much as I do lol. But I love the fact that NLS has garlic in it whereas Omega doesn't. Omega also splits up their wheat content to make themselves look better when they really aren't as good as NLS. NLS only has one filler in the first three ingredients whereas Omega technically does not but if you combine the Wheat it comes in second place.

 

[anitsirk92]

Thanks for your input! I have no idea whether or not the pesticide thing is true. I just saw a few reviews that mentioned it. I think you've convinced me to get NLS pellets. My main concern about NLS was thefact that the .5mm sink but if they don't sink righat away then it should be fine. Thanks again for your help!

 

[anitsirk92]

Is there is big difference between the regular NLS small fish pellets and the Thera A pellets? Would the Thera A pellets be better?

 

[Veloran]

Ethoxyquin in fish food (the outcry you probably read about as I did was by dog owners as it's in dog food as well) is a preservative. It is not necessarily added to the food, but if you live in the US, the laws require any vessel carrying fish meal into the country to have it preserved by ethoxyquin.

Therefore, odds will be that if your pellets contain fish meal, it will have some level of ethoxyquin. As to it's safety, I found a lot of complaints on forums, but nothing really backed up by any studies that showed anything definitive.

 

[lilnaugrim]

Interesting to know about that Veloran, thanks for the info!

As for the Thera A vs. Small Fish, the Thera A just contains a little more garlic in it. In actuality there are no laws binding animal food ingredients to be listed by weight like it does with human food so just because it may say Fish Meal in the first ingredient, it might not be what the food is made up of most--though that's just an example, most foods actually do contain mostly fish meal lol. But NLS is a very trustworthy company I've found, in fact, we had a representative come in and give us a nice long post about the food and a few changes they made to the food like instead of specifying Salmon Meal, they now changed it to Fish Meal because Salmon isn't always available for them to use so it gives them the liberty of chosing the fish they use, however they use good fish for their food.

Most of the time it is salmon still which can confuse people if they have a white fish lol. White fish have a tendancy to turn a little pink if they are fed Salmon because of an amino acid called astaxanthin which gives Salmon that bright red/pink color. So if the fish is eating food with astaxanthin in it, it can enhance the color of the fish lol, it's not entirely permanent though, mostly just while the fish is eating that particular food.

 

[anitsirk92]

Thanks both of you for the info. This was all very informative!