Personally I like Hikari but only because of its smaller size. If you look at the composition numbers, there's no comparison to PE mysis (<10% vs. something 60-70% if I recall correctly). For that reason PE stuff is awesome (fish will grow very quickly if fed this stuff as a staple), but since it is a heavy food, you have to be careful not to overdo it otherwise you risk spiking your system. If I have fussy eaters I'll try to start them on Hikari and try to graduate them onto PE over time.

Ahh lets travel down this road again.. Hikari is a salt water shrimp collected from salt water were it is the natural food of salt water fish.

PE is collected from a fresh water lake in kelona were it is the food of fresh water fish who's lake freezes over in the winter so they need more fat to survive.

So. feed your fish PE and it is like taking a kid who grew up on a diet of rice and fish and switching his diet to beef and potato's.

there is a evolution factor here and although our fish may like the PE stuff it might not necessarily be good for them as a regular part of there diet.

another comparison is taking a tang, which has evolved to live on a very high fiber low protein diet and putting him in a tank which has no algae and feeding him meaty foods all the time instead. not exactly good for the evolved digestive system of a tang if you ask me.

look at mad cow disease.. came from making a cow eat what it naturally wouldn't eat.

I feed PE to my fresh water fish and Hikari to my salt water fish.

Steve

No let's not travel this road travelled before. Your opinion is just that, an opinion and it's no more valid than, say, my opinion. You better not be feeding Cyclops either then, since it too is cultivated in FW.

SW vs FW is irrelevant. As a food source either it will meet something's needs, or it won't. If it doesn't, than it doesn't. But if it does, then it's totally irrelevant as to its origins.

Your analogies are entertaining but flawed, my friend. If you're happy not feeding PE mysis to your fish then good for you. Whatever works for you is what's important.

I agree that simply feeding a homogenous diet of one thing may be flawed for long-term. That's why it's important to look at the numbers and be sure of what you're feeding.

Wow.. this is quite interesting as I have never read so much about a fish's diet. It's all good to know guys! I appreciate both of your opinions.

I will give the PE a try at least... I mean, a variety can't hurt. I just have one last question about my mandarin.

If it's eating frozen regularly.. completely adjusted.. am I able to keep it successfully in a 20g tank ? I plan on an upgrade to a 77g maybe within a few months anyways... but it may be longer after. I just found a crazy deal on a 77g setup that I cannot resist.

I also wanted to tell you the current tank mates... there's 2 clowns, 1 purple firefish and a YWG. Will they all get along? So far so good, I just don't want any surpises if you knwo what I mean.

Also.. do you recommend soaking mysis/brine in garlic extract before feeding?

So will my fish get mad cow, er, fish disease from eating non native foods? So pellets are bad then too? How about Fijian algae for Hawaiian tangs? Mad tang disease? I think that might be true, 'cause my tang looks mad. Real mad, in fact, unless it gets some FW Mysis. Which is making it more mad, correct? Holy Mad Cow, Batman, what should I feed my SW fish in a box? If I eat SW fish, will I go mad? Or did I evolve from a SW organism, therefore maybe I should eat SW fish? How can I be expected to keep my fish from going mad, I can't even figure out what to eat my self!!

Going down this road is just maddening, don't ya think? I gotta go eat some pellets, bye. :razz:

:lol:

What brand pellets? :lol:

So as far as the two sizes of PE mysis, my fish don't like it much because it seems pretty big (about 1/4"" size), I bought a large slab of it from Ocean Aquatics, so I guess I need to buy the smaller size of PE mysis, is this commonly available? My mysis was not labelled at all, just a big huge freezer pack that I was told was PE mysis.

For smaller fish (such as Mandarins) you can just take a small chunk and shave it onto a spoon with a sharp knife - works well to deliver smaller pieces. You don't get the whole shrimpies, that's all. They still go nuts over the pieces, once they try one.

That's neat.. thanks for the extra little tip. I'll let you all know if it eats some more mysis tonight.

Bah, thats my whole point we don't know what feeding non natural foods will do to them. there are several published articles about pellet food and how by volume they contain way more nutrition than natural foods and because of that you should feed less frequently. and so on and so on..

Tony you are right everyone is going to have there own opinions about feeding and what to feed, heck thats why there is more types of food for fish than there is for cats. my main point is it is a non natural food source for salt water aquariums and we don't know if it is good in the long run or not. It may turn out that the levels are not far enuf out of wack that it makes any difference. who knows.

Brad didn't your tomato clown develop MFD (mad fish disease)?
:mrgreen:

Steve