Betta Fish Forum banner

New Life Spectrum

1 reading
7.9K views 78 replies 24 participants last post by  Ian Tepoot  
#1 ·
I'm currently feeding Hikari Bio-Gold for my Betta, Picasso. I'm looking to buy New Life Spectrum for him today, since I like to have two foods at once. I also fed the Aqueon Betta food, but it's expired now. I've had that food for 5 years, and with only one fish, it is only half way done. I know neither are that great, so I'm going to NLS.

I'm wondering which type of NLS you feed. I know the Betta formula has less protein than the Small Fish one, and the Small Fish has smaller pellets. I know they have the Thera-A too, with garlic. I also saw some people feed the Grow formula? Which one do you feed/recommend? How long does it take to finish? Guess it's not too big of a deal tho, it's not too expensive and last a long time.

Thanks!
 
#2 ·
I use the betta formula though for a little while I was using the small goldfish formula since I was having trouble finding the betta one.

At only 3 or 4 pellets per fish it seems like it lasts forever. I have 9 bettas and the container was only just past the top part of the label before my son dumped it on the floor.
 
#6 ·
i use the small fish formula right now as i recently had some baby betta. i am going to switch to the thera +a as it contains extra garlic.this is supposed to help with internal parasites and picky eaters will enjoy the extra garlic. the grow formula has more protein at 50% and includes squid,new zealand mussles along with a micro algae. small fish and grow both have the extra small .5mm size.i think the thera +a is larger.
 
#7 ·
I just changed to NLS yesterday. Three of my fish are having no trouble with the switch at all. The other two seem to have trouble with the size & just grabbing a hold of it in general. I wonder if it's slipperier than Omega One. I got the betta formula. It's a huge container. It's gonna last forever!!!! Plus, I have two containers of Omega One that will last until the end of time. Anyways, I'm feeding the two that have trouble one NLS pellet & one Omega pellet until they get used to it. Maybe I should crush them up first. But my baby betta has no trouble eating them though. She's a piggy no matter how big the pellet is.
 
#8 ·
All of my fish are fed NLS Thera A exclusively. The bettas and other small community fish get the 1 mm size. The larger fish get 2 mm and some fish get the 3 mm. The 0.5 mm pellets are for when I get reeeeally small fish, like baby neons and stuff.
 
#11 ·
Main thing that steered me away from Omega One is that the pellets seem really big. NLS seems to have more fish based ingredients too. Don't get me wrong, Omega One still is a great food. :)

NLS doesn't seem to be on the Petco website anymore. Hopefully it's in store.
 
#17 ·
When we got our male betta, Stormy, we fed him Tetra Foating Mini Pellets, but one thing they were NOT and that was "Mini".........at least compared to Hikari Bio-Gold and Omega One Buffet. Our guy had a real problem sucking the Tetra pellets into his mouth, let alone eating them. So, we stopped the Tetra and started Hikari Bio-Gold (b/c for the Reviews we read). There was two fish in Tetra, but after each "fish ingredient" was the word "meal" and the first ingredient was Fish Meal. After we learned more about Betta food, that brand just didn't cut it!

He really liked the Hikari Bio-Gold, but we wanted to feed another brand with besides that (diversity in diet). Even though Bio-Gold's fish ingredients also have the word "Meal" after each one, many betta people use this brand, so it couldn't bad. Anyway, after reading info and reviews, got Omega One Buffet. He "swooped" these down fast. Now, Omega One Buffet actually states the kind of fish in the ingredients, but no "meal" word after.........that sounded great and the reason for such high reviews/recommendations.

NOW, read excellent reviews for NLS Betta Formula.........sounds like the VERY BEST betta pellet on the market!! So, giving very serious thought about ordering a jar (50g) of this on Amazon. Petco carries NLS, but not this kind and no other LFS carries the NLS brand at all. I've read some reviews that state the pellet is too big, but if it's the size of either Hikari or Omega One.......it sure isn't too big for our guy.

Last (sorry for the long reply, but when retired, have plenty of time to write good stuff for info LOL), we are wondering how may people out there actually do feed their betta more than one brand of pellet? Does "diversity in diet" mean more than one brand of pellet? I think it would, b/c the other betta food is pretty much for a "treat" not a meal.
 
#18 · (Edited)
When we got our male betta, Stormy, we fed him Tetra Foating Mini Pellets, but one thing they were NOT and that was "Mini".........at least compared to Hikari Bio-Gold and Omega One Buffet. Our guy had a real problem sucking the Tetra pellets into his mouth, let alone eating them. So, we stopped the Tetra and started Hikari Bio-Gold (b/c for the Reviews we read). There was two fish in Tetra, but after each "fish ingredient" was the word "meal" and the first ingredient was Fish Meal. After we learned more about Betta food, that brand just didn't cut it!



He really liked the Hikari Bio-Gold, but we wanted to feed another brand with besides that (diversity in diet). Even though Bio-Gold's fish ingredients also have the word "Meal" after each one, many betta people use this brand, so it couldn't bad. Anyway, after reading info and reviews, got Omega One Buffet. He "swooped" these down fast. Now, Omega One Buffet actually states the kind of fish in the ingredients, but no "meal" word after.........that sounded great and the reason for such high reviews/recommendations.

The "fish meal" in hikari isn't the bad part of the food - it's the wheat, soy, potato, wheat, corn and more wheat that makes it bad. It's a terrible ingredient list.

"Meal" is not a bad thing. Omega one betta buffet uses fish meal just like every other fish food out there. Fish MUST be converted to meal in order to be used in fish food, so when a company states a protein on the label that is NOT a meal, most times it's a misrepresentation of the abundance of that ingredient. Plain old "salmon" listed means the preprocessed weight of the fish is used, and 80% of the weight of the fish is lost in the mealing process. So they can claim that 100 lbs of salmon are used, even though there is really only 20 lbs of salmon in the product.

The bottom line is that omega one uses the ingredients list as a way of making their food look better than it really is.
 
#20 ·
NLS has garlic in it so fish tends to like it better and it is better for immune system. i feed OO and NLS (2 each) every day.

if the pellet is too big you can grind it down a tad using a mortor or the back of a steel spoon. also, if the fish spits it out and then pick it up and spits it out again, it means it's too big to chew.
 
#21 ·
I've been feeding my rasboras and betta Hikari micro pellets, but its a pain to feed them. They are separated into yellow/red/green. Yellow being vitamins, green being plant, and red being protein. I hardly ever see the red ones floating down so the rasboras can get them.

Ordered some NLS small fish formula Thera A, so hopefully that will be easier to "portion" out.
 
#22 ·
I remove the bulb of the turkey baster and put the food through it and allow it to sink to the bottom in a controlled manner (modified feeding tunnel) . the fish gets excited seeing the tube and the food come down. i usually land the food on my marimo moss log so i can see and clean up as needed.
 
#25 · (Edited)
Thank you so much for your response. I'm a huge advocate of the product, but have been confronted with questions and assertions about the revised list. Buying 5 lb buckets, I haven't yet seen the new list yet. You have answered all the questions I had, so thank you. I will continue to push your product on everyone.
 
#26 ·
Thank you very much for the response, Ian. That's great information and excellent to hear from someone involved with the company. I love NLS and will continue to suggest its use to our members.

I have one (small) question, though- Why are Wakame and Spinosum seaweeds advantageous to terrestrial based fruits and vegetables?
 
#33 · (Edited)
I have one (small) question, though- Why are Wakame and Spinosum seaweeds advantageous to terrestrial based fruits and vegetables?
Simply speaking, tropical fish don't digest terrestrial fruits and vegetables quite as well as aquatic plants. While it can still be good for them (which is why we included them previously), they aren't receiving the full benefit of it since some nutrients are trapped in terrestrial forms of cellulose, starch etc. that fish simply weren't evolved to process. The seaweeds -- while oceanic and not freshwater -- are still more in line with their systems and contain helpful trace elements, vitamins and jelly form proteins. Having many varieties of seaweed (as these two are in addition to the spirulina, kelp, ulva, chlorella etc.) provides the same varietal "basket of produce" nutritional effect as having mixed fruit and vegetable extracts -- except in this case it's all aquatic sourced.

As a side benefit, the stuff (Spinosum in particular) is super gooey and reduces reliance on the wheat binder as well.

Hope this helps!
 
#28 ·
I feed the betta formula to all my bettas. I will likely be buying the small fish formula for my community tank since the betta in there likes the micro pellets that the neon tetras eat, and the neons are always trying to eat the NLS that my betta misses (or at times they still the NLS pellets lol)
My bettas are MUCH happier eating the NLS and I've noticed how much more they enjoy it over Hikari (which is what I was feeding before)
 
#29 ·
I've read you should not feed garlic to them every day. It's true that there are two different sizes of the pellets. I've twice bought it and got the larger size on Amazon even though the small size in weight and picture was shown. That was not a problem a year ago. I can tell you Thera A is the small size which has the garlic since you won't be feeding it every day you could opt for it. I would suggest contacting the seller before you buy to be sure you get the tiny pellets which are perfect.
This for example is the larger size pellet which you want to avoid unless you have really large betta
http://www.bigalspets.com/betta-formula-1-mm-semi-floating-pellets-50-g.html

I think the smaller pellets are like a 50 gram size. Here's a picture so you can see the difference
The all purpose size is what I used to be able to buy but I am having trouble getting. Even though they promote betta food I've compared ingredients and sometimes some of the all purpose foods have the same ingredients.

http://badmanstropicalfish.com/products/New_Life_Spectrum.html
 
#31 ·
My fish have eaten nothing but Thera A for about 5 years now.

There are more than 2 sizes of pellets.