I ran into the Hikari rep at the fish farm. We (no surprise here) ended up talking about feeding fish/turtles.

Mike D: Is your love of Hikari based on meeting any of the sales folks? When my buddies up there told him I do rescue stuff the rep was super generous with a bunch of different 2lb sample bags of food.

On the other hand he had said some things that didn't match up with what I have seen here and was looking for an opinion outside of someone that is employed by a fish food company.

Like for Feeding Cichlids: I use convicts for feeder fish for a number of the turtles here. Some catch them, some don't. Ignoring the fact that they're meant for short term keeping, he had issues with me (once they're in with the turtles) feeding them koi pellets or turtle sticks for the rest of their lives. I use one of the lower fat "maintainer" koi foods from Omega One as a staple, since they give me a fantastic deal on it.

Now, of the ones that haven't been eaten I have 4 currently adult Cons that have been living for 2+ years on koi pellets. I checked the nutrition info from the pellets I got today vs the usual food and noticed the percentages are really close. Protein was both 40% Fat was 5% for the Cichlid food vs 6% for the koi pellets. Everything else was also in acceptable ranges to each other.

With the nutritional percentages that close. Does it really matter? I don't see a single ingredient in their cichlid pellets that would make them a special necessity. They're a bright bright red, So I'm assuming they have something in them much like the color enhancing koi food to bring out the colors but otherwise I'm not seeing much of anything else special.

Krill was another thing he wasn't in favor of. That big Aro here gets krill pretty regularly and he was saying it was bad and would ruin his liver. I've tried searching online for anything similar and wasn't haveing any luck.

You guys ever hear about anything like any of that or had any problems with foods? I'm sure there's *some* truth to most of it, but my sales pitch alarm went off too.

I think allot of it is sales pitch. Especially the Krill thing. Its kind of the idea that if the product is not used in our food its bad. Krill is one of the main ingredients in both New Life Spectrum, and the foods that Ken (of Ken's Fish) sell. Both of these foods have gotten glowing reviews in the aquarium community. I have been feeding Hikari Gold and Omega 1 Cichlid Pellets to my fish for the past several years. I used to feed NLS but it was just too darn expensive. Because of all of the good things I've been hearing about Ken's foods, I just made an order with him this past weekend, so we'll see what the JDs think about it. Hopefully they will like it because its way cheaper (most varieties are less than $5.00/lb), and comes in a wide range of sizes.

Mark

I've never yet had a JD turn down anything resembling food yet I'm sure you'll make out fine on it.

The krill one I especially don't get. I finally unpacked the stuff from the car and the bag of food he gave me specifically for the Aro (Hikari Food Sticks) has as it's main ingredient krill meal.

Most "high quality" food that is forumlated for omnivores or carnivores has krill as a main ingredient. I have never heard of krill being bad. I mainly feed all my fish Hikari and NLS pellet on a regular. I think the different formulas have ingredients not listed. I usually go with specific forumlas for specific needs...ex. Cichlid forumla for the Cichlids Gold fish formula for the goldies. I dont think it will make a huge to feed Cichlids Goldfish pellets but it may not be feasable to feed goldies Cichlid food. Anyway back to the feeding although I feed Pellet on a regular (daily) I still believe it is beneficial to supplement....with live or freeze dried and most of the time I supplement with Krill or shrimp....earthworms on ocassion for a snack.

IMO the reason for the formulas is because of the percentages of other additives not listed. Also the amount of say krill in eash formulation or the percentage of vitamins, color enhancers or what not. As far as in general I don't think there is a big difference...it is more of a piece of mind thing for me.

I would guess most of his comments were sales pitch and reflect what he was brainwashed by his company, to say. Hikari would love nothing more than for you to buy one bag of food for each type of fish you had so they can sell you more product. I use Hikari and Ken's fish foods and have had no problems with either.