Pellets Fishing

[Adele Strecker]

Half a dozen handfuls of pellets would legitimately stop the carp in their tracks, regardless of location, time, whatever. This was the opposite to my carefully positioned beds of particle, which only picked up the occasional fish during optimal feeding times. As carp anglers, we experience epiphanies at different times when things just seem to click, for me this is one of the most vivid and profound examples that I can recall.

A common misconception that I see many anglers wrestling with is around the oil content, with some anglers believing that pellets only work because of their high oil content. There is actually a large variance in price between the cheapest pellets and the most expensive, 90% of the pellets that operate at the cheaper end of the market are those with the very highest oil content.

All of the raw ingredients that go into Aller Aqua's Carp pellets is all natural with no artificial colours or ingredients, the pellets have also been through trials to show the growth rates are world beating and also to make sure they are as palatable as possible so the Carp like what they are eating so they keep coming back for more.

Aller Aqua has factories in Denmark, Poland, Germany, Egypt, Zambia and China and we export our products to more than 60 countries worldwide. We have a broad and professional product range, consisting of feed for 30 species of fish.

We know the importance the right feed plays in our customers production, and therefore our own professional development- and research centre in Germany, Aller Aqua Research, consistently works on optimising, developing and documenting the effect of our products.

If I had only one choice, it would be a very high quality flake food. The flakes would slowly cover more "edible" territory, in the tank, for everyone to take a bite, as the rest sinks to the substrate, for the bottom dwellers.

I have been doing a deep dive into the aquarium nutrition world and can share some youtube links if allowed, and let me start off saying my preference is flake food, but there is a lot of information out there that show flake food is not the best option, the way its made causes it to lose a lot of nutrition and it has parts of it that the fish aren't able to absorb, flakes also lose a lot of nutrition into the water very quickly once it hits the water, pellets are better then flakes apparently but there are other options better then pellets like frozen food. Ben ocharts episode 2 on fish nutrtion explains the waste/digestibility piece really well. Im still learned but really sad because I feed my fish like 5 different types of flake food. Womp womp

I like feeding pellets more then anything. Because flakes will loose al of their nutrients after 5 seconds of introducing it into the water. There also easier to feed and the NLS has better quality then most other flake foods even xtreme.

I use all of the above. I try to feed a different food every day. Flake food is very versatile because it can even be crumbled up to feed to fry. I didn't have any fry food and a Molly caught be off guard and had some little ones. I promptly ordered Xtreme Nano from the Co-Op and in the meantime I crumbled some Krill Flakes and crumbled some Bug Bites Tropical. I would prefer the Flakes though.

I feed flakes, pellets, granules, tabs and I have no preference because most of the time I crush them all into a combined powdery mess. If I had to choose one, I would probably choose pellets with high greens content because those are a) good for my bigger goldfish; b) can be crushed for smaller omnivores/vegetarians; and c) added to carnivores' diet of mostly live and frozen foods.

I admittedly am a huge flake fan, but the deeper I dive into this the bigger the no is to flakes unfortunately. I like how easy it is to feed everyone with thr flakes but the lack of nutrition in them does have me concerned about my water pigs I heard the same as you. That they lose most their nutrition into the water in about 5 to 7 seconds.

I feed flake every morning and rotate through a bunch of other foods for my night time feeding. I also skip feeding on Sundays, and every few weeks skip a few days in a row to encourage everyone to forage for food.

If you cannot get him on pellets get cyclopeeze flakes. Mine took a while to start noticeably eating in my tank too and when I was using just reef flakes, but once I switched and tried the cyclopeeze flakes he started noticeably eating those. Also they had to be small since his mouth wasn't that big..

I bred Bangaii's for a few years, and never had any problem with them eating only frozen. They never would adapt to pellets or flakes for me. I fed a homemade mixture of squid, haddock, shrimp, krill, mysis and brine. Here's my basic technique:

Buy raw seafood ingredients from grocery store, making sure they arent dyed. Clump ingredients into hardball sized balls, and freeze. Grate frozen balls of food into small bits of food. mix all ingredients together with some water, and then freeze it all into ziplock bags.

They tend to only like frozen food. It took mine 6 months before it would eat a single flake. Now it loves them but I only use every now and then for entertainment. I had a pajama cardinal for 2 years that never touched a flake. Find a good frozen food to feed it then try flakes, pellets is going to be tough.

Since the first day I got mine it has eaten anything I put in the tank. I don't feed mine fish flakes very often but when I do my Bangaii loves them. I use frozen most of the time and all my fish like that too.

Yeah my banghai won't eat pellets either but I normally feed rod's and mysis. My clown loves pellets so I thought it was a availability thing but now that I think of it I have seen my cardinal spit them out.

My Bangaii Cardinal never ate a single flake in my 28g nanocube. I wanted to have my fish eat flakes just to give them some variety in their diet and also in case I go away for a while that I could autofeed them. I bought all sorts of flake food and they just stayed in my cabinet collecting dust. Now that I moved all my fish in my 120g tank, he started eating flakes as soon as I put some in. I put some spirulina flakes in the tank when I bought my tangs and to my surprise, the Bangaii Cardinal started eating too. Now he eats everytime I put flakes in. Now if I can only get my Lyretail Anthias to eat flakes then I'm all set. None of my fish eats pellets though. I wish they would. I should probably keep trying though.

Have you tried New Life Spectrum pellets? Almost everything seems to eat them; even Moorish Idols and Lionfish! I used to bring in Moorish Idols(when i managed LFS) and was able to usually get them (80% of them) onto the NLS marine pellets within a few days, and failing that, onto the NLS Finicky Fish formula. Phenominal product, nothing like it in the world.

I have two Clownfish, Zelda is approx 3" long, Shorty is approx 1 1/2 to 2 inches long. I feed them along with flakes and frozen shrimp, Topfin Soft Sinking Community Pellets. Both fish are big pigs and suck the pellets in and then act like the pellets are too big. Sometimes they spit them out, and the other day Zelda sucked one in and acted like it was stuck and she was choking. I would really like to ditch the flake food, and stick to the pellets.

I have looked at the store, and on F&S site for different pellets, but they don't really give me a clue as to the size of the pellets. So question is..is it OK to give them these pellets, will they actually choke? Or, what would be a smaller pellet for them to eat? What do you all feed yours pellet wise?

They won't choke but they can get large pieces of food lodged in their throats. Remember fish don't use their mouths to breathe they have gills, these gills transport oxygen directly to their blood like lungs do, so as long as their gills are able to move they can breathe. However, if a piece of food is lodged in their throat and they cannot move their mouths they can and will die. Luckily pellets soften in water and will eventually just break up in a few seconds and the fish can swallow them. The only time I have heard of fish "choking" on food is from bones or large exoskeletons that were left in frozen.

I'm still a fair noob, but I use pellets sometimes with my clowns......I try to vary their diet, and one type of pellet is too 'dry' for them, it seems. I soak the pellets in tank water to soften them up, and they don't have any trouble eating them then.

2) Feeding fish takes natural selection off the table. This can negatively impact the entire ecosystem of a stream. It discourages predation and supplements trout which would otherwise end up food themselves. If the trout in question is capable of reproduction, they pass on inferior genetics. Feeding also encourages fish to to crowd into holding water in unnatural numbers, increasing the spread of disease. These hordes of fish put unnatural pressure on forage food and can virtually wipe out localized forage species like insects and crawfish, leaving the fish increasingly dependent on feeding.

4) Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. Feeding fish in one section of a stream can negatively impact the overall population. Causing fish to congregate puts them at risk on many levels. In addition to spreading disease, large pods of fish attract predators like otters, herons and bait fishermen. When a large pod is wiped out, the fish which are lost might have populated several miles of stream. Spread out, they would have survived.

6) The issue of predators goes a step further. Faced with the decimation of his fish, the well intentioned trout feeder usually finds himself at war. He finds himself devoting more and more of his time to fighting a losing battle. Trapping or shooting otters is extremely difficult and time consuming as well as illegal many places. Keeping bears out of feeders is virtually impossible. Bait fisherman shoot back and burying them is a shit-load of work. What starts off as a fun endeavor often ends a litany of frustration and negativity.

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