huhsleepysteven Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 Hi i saw this new food product on kijiji not sure if its good it looks pretty good its fish food. wondering if this is a good change. not sure if you can post links but you can remove it if its not allowed to be posted its http://edmonton.kijiji.ca/c-pets-accessories-REPASHY-line-of-gel-fish-foods-available-in-Edmonton-W0QQAdIdZ352617394 Thanks Steven Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jvision Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 The reptile line has apparently revolutionized how some herps are kept and bred. I've had this new fish food for a week now. It seems pretty good so far, but the amount that the fish go thru is probably cost preventative - for me, anyway. I'm going to try one more order of the largest quantity, and see how it goes. I really like the ingredients, tho. I would put it between fresh/live (variety, not just one type of food) and the best prepared food as far as quality and ease of preparation goes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hackerberry Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 I've seen some of the reviews and it's looks like it is most beneficial to frys and grazers. I'd like tou try some if I can find it in Calgary. hb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jayba Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 I ordered a 1/2 pound of the meat eater and 1/2 of a general one from rich at Canada Pleco. Looking for something for carnivor plecos that won't turn to crud in an hour like earth worm sticks. And they ignore NLS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blink Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 That's Kelly from Ectothermic Reptiles, he's an ERAS person and always been fair to deal with when I've done business with him. I'm tempted to try out the community stuff but I've already got a shelf full of food. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprucegruve Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 im interested in the soilent green,and the meat pie flavors. also i saw on a differnt website,allan reprashy is in the process of devolping a wood-gel diet for panaque plecos Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fisher Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 im interested in the soilent green Charlton Heston was too! It was a good movie in '73. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JORG Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 (edited) I'm still waiting to try this new product out. The soilent green may be helpful for feeding new shipments of wild oto's and small herbivorous pleco's as it takes them awhile to get used to munching on NLS wafers. If the meat pie formula is excepted by small piranha's that would be handy. There are probably quite a few more specialized uses for this food but I think it is over hyped and certainly not a replacement for good quality pellets,wafer,flakes or sticks. I find it amusing when it is stated that it is great for aufwuch grazers as they can pick at it all day long, I know if I put a chunck of it into my Tropheus tanks It will be pulverized in short order. Feeding it to fry may be useful but most of my fry tanks have snails in them so I suspect the snails would suck it up pretty fast as it is probably easier and quicker for them to inhale jello than a wafer. I'm also not quite clear on the 1 ounce of powder makes 1 pound of food bit, it seems to me if you start with 1 ounce and add 15 ounces of water you have a diluted 16 ounces of product. But I will know more once I try it out. Edited February 8, 2012 by JORG Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RD. Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 (edited) While I do not agree with how certain "facts" have been presented about this product from a few vendors, Allen and I have discussed this matter in public, and private, and I think Allen is a stand up guy who is simply looking to expand his reptile line of food. I wish him nothing but the best in his new venture. Having said that ......... I'm also not quite clear on the 1 ounce of powder makes 1 pound of food bit, it seems to me if you start with 1 ounce and add 15 ounces of water you have a diluted 16 ounces of product. This is precisely why Jason has found that his fish go through so much of this food, 85% of the final product is comprised of water. In order for a fishes energy requirements to be met, especially young fry with high metabolic rates, and much higher energy requirements compared to adults, they will have to eat a LOT of this gel mix. Water adds nothing but weight/volume to a food, it has zero nutrient value to a fish. If one adds 75% water to a powder mix such as this, the nutrient profile of the final (mixed with water) product is then reduced by 75%. What's listed on the label on a dry matter basis, only applies to the dry powder. In other words, Allen's 'meat pie' formula once reconstituted with tap water will no longer be 55% protein, or 8% crude fat, and 8% moisture content, it will be more along the lines of 14% crude protein, 2% crude fat, and 85% moisture content, and that's the food that was formulated for carnivores.The same holds true for all of the various formulas once tap water has been added to the powder mix. Certainly adding moisture will increase the overall palatability of most feeds, so it's no surprise that most fish will eagerly consume it. Some people will have you believe that the water content of the finished product is irrelevant, yet clearly it is not. That high volume of water pushes the rest of the nutrient levels down in the final gel mix, way down, just as it would if one was feeding a pellet food that consisted of 85% water Using the same type of logic it would be like adding 10 ounces of water to 1 ounce of Seachem Prime, and expecting to get the same bang for your buck, when in fact all that's going to accomplish is one having to use 10x what they normally would use to treat the exact same amount of tap water. The following article on Nutrient Dense Fish Feeds and was written by R.D. Miles, Professor, Department of Animal Sciences, and F.A. Chapman, Associate Professor, Department of Fisheries and Aquatics, University of Florida. http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fa145 "The moisture content of a feed pellet also will influence its nutrient and energy densities because more water adds weight but no nutrients or calories. Therefore, dry, nutrient-dense feeds will have higher energy and nutrient densities. Highly digestible, nutrient-dense diets are especially important for feeding larvae or small fish, such as ornamental species. Because of their small size, these animals require more nutrients per unit of body mass than older, larger animals. When feeds with low nutrient densities are used, the capacity of the gut may be exceeded before the fish consumes adequate amounts of nutrients. These are the exact same points that I stated in another discussion on this subject. None of this is exactly new to the world of aquaculture. When it comes to feeding fish, be it fry, juveniles, or adults, the law of diminishing returns often comes into play. A fish can only digest and assimilate so much food in any given period of time. Ideally you do not want the input, to exceed the output. This is where not only digestibility, but the FCR (feed conversion ratio) comes into play. FCR is basically the ratio of the gain in the wet body weight of the fish to the amount of feed fed. A true FCR also includes wasted feed and mortalities. In a properly managed system, where overfeeding doesn't take place, and mortalities are few and far between, the FCR will be low, which is ideal. Overfeeding or underfeeding will increase the FCR, which is not ideal, unless you like wasting your hard earned $$$$. With some of today's nutrient rich diets many hobbyists tend to overfeed, human nature I suppose (my fish are hungry) when in reality they are wasting food ($$$) and creating an excessive bio load (added pollution) on their system. In the average hobbyist set up, fry do not (and IMO should not) stuff themselves on food all day long. Ideally they should be fed close to satiation levels approx. 2-4 times a day, and allowed time in between feedings to fully assimilate and properly digest that food. Fish being fish, many will eat far beyond what they are capable of fully utilizing, or as stated in the paper linked to above there is also the risk that the capacity of the gut may be exceeded before the fish consumes adequate amounts of nutrients. Which is where the law of diminishing returns comes into play. And this is not to beat up on Allen, I have already publicly stated that IMO gel foods can have their applications under certain circumstances. Obligate algae eaters such as wild otocinclus catfish is probably a good example, many die during the acclimation process, as any importer will tell you. Getting them eating (anything) straight away is going to be a big plus. BTW - someone might want to give the kijiji person a heads up on his press release that he used in his ad, some of that info has apparently already changed, including some of the ingredients.(such as corn meal) He might want to check with Allen. Also, last time I checked, anchovy meal and sardine meal were indeed fish meal. lol Edited February 8, 2012 by RD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jayba Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 Well, I'm so glad RD is still visiting from time to time! If this response had happened a week ago it could have saved me a hundred bucks. *sigh* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RD. Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 (edited) I'm certainly not attempting to discourage anyone from trying gel foods, but I think that one should proceed with their eyes wide open and not be swayed by what some may refer to as what's more "natural" for a fish that's kept in captivity. As an example, With regards to plecos eating driftwood .......... I have been telling people for years that panaques etc. don't eat wood for it's nutrient value, or for digestibility, they eat it as a secondary action when scraping the biofilm that grows on the wood. Just recently there is now science to back that up. (I posted this previously on AA last year) "Based on recent publications by Donovan German and his coauthors, it seems that they are not digesting the wood as was speculated in previous papers by Nelson and coauthors. They don't seem to have a gut anatomy designed to support the microorganisms that would be needed to break down the wood and, like other loricariids, have a very fast gut passage time. " More on that here ......... http://german.bio.uc...K_response.html Even for those not convinced, the simple workaround is simply providing some driftwood in ones tank, there's absolutely no need to add "wood" to a prepared food. IMO all that will accomplish is lowering the overall nutrient value of the food. For decades Tropheus keepers felt that due to the intestinal length & long digestive process in that species, it should only be fed low protein "green" food, and that any amount of animal based protein could cause bloat. Yet science has proven that in captive bred species of Tropheus the intestinal length can be half of what's found in wild specimens. "Intestinal prolongation, although indicative of specialization on diets with low nutritional value, such as those of epilithic algae and detritus, has been shown to be highly plastic (Sturmbauer et al.1992). In Tropheus moorii the intestinal length of domestic fish measured only 50% of the length found in wild individuals (Sturmbauer et al. 1992)." A more recent study that was published in 2009 demonstrates just how great intestinal plasticity can be in response to the diet quality of various species of fish found in Lake Tanganyika. http://limnology.wis...-gut-length.pdf The above paper clearly demonstrates just how adaptive wild Rift Lake cichlids can be when it comes to their diet. As long as one feeds a quality food, diet will generally be a non issue, and will not cause any type of major gastrointestinal stress. These fish were born to adapt. I add driftwood, rocks, and enough lighting to my tanks to provide a steady growth of biofilm & algae, which allows the grazers to graze between meals on a constant basis. I do this not to provide missing nutrients, but to allow me to view the fishes various "natural" feeding behaviour. Edited February 8, 2012 by RD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
syno321 Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 Thanks Neil, your knowledge and passion on this topic are unsurpassed and valued greatly. I purchased some and am in the process of trying them. I will try to remember to update this thread with my percieved results. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jayba Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 I love Neil's answers. In regards to fish he probably has forgotten more than I know. But when Sprucegruve mentioned a Panaque formula, the first thing I thought of the post that RD posted. RD as always knows his stuff, and isn't afraid to look into things for the answers. Some things that i never really thought through was the water factor in a gel food. Neil has a gift for explaining things well. Me its numbers. We can't have it all I guess.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fisher Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 If this response had happened a week ago it could have saved me a hundred bucks. *sigh* watching the movie might not make you feel any better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprucegruve Posted February 9, 2012 Report Share Posted February 9, 2012 thank you neil.....i made some of the same point as you on another forum....i got shot down and called dumb. i tryed to say if you water down the soultion instead of 50%protein you would actually get 15%. thank you for making that more clear Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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