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First impressions of New Era fish food.


mattrox

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I have been trialing the New Era Rift Lake Green, Rift Lake Red, and Aegis for a couple of weeks now. The texture of the pellet is very interesting, it is soft, but not mushy. I have a very large venustus in with some mbuna, I have been feeding that tank rift lake green. The pellets are about 1mm in diameter and 3 to 4 mm long, the mbuna really do smash it. Due to the texture and plyability of the pellet I am able to squeeze a pinch into a larger pellet to drop in for the venustus. This has been very effective.

In the fish room:

In the hap and peacock tanks I have been using rift lake red. But a couple have labidochromis species, so I do feed some rift lake green in these tanks. I'm not too fussed if the haps and peacocks get the green. All the fish eat the food ravenously.

The mbuna tanks have been fed on rift lake green. Again all fish are really eager to eat the food. More so than 'normal'.

I have fed the Aegis immune booster food today to all the above tanks. I will do it all this week, and return to the red/green next week.

The baby fish are still being fed NLS Grow and Fish Focus growth, with some of the larger juveniles getting a little bit of the red/green as appropriate.

My impressions are that this food is a quality product. If things continue to be positive it will be added to the range of foods I use in the fish room. I had just returned from holiday, where for 2 weeks the fish were being looked after and fed every second day, and not much food either. They were swapped over to the New Era about 1 week after my return and the resumption of 'normal' feeding and are still recovering their condition. All the fish are maintaining their stunning colours and they are almost back to peak condition. I also think that the amount of food to give to the fish seems to be less than you would think, I guess a better way of saying it is; it is easy to give the fish too much food, they fill up quickly. I still try to feed what they will clean up in 30 secs, then feed the same amount again, but it took a couple of feeds to work out what this amount of food was. It will be interesting to see how the food is priced when released on the market.

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will be intersting to see it when its available, also price will be a factor for most hobbyists.

more foods on the market means more competition so maybe prices may drop on some of the dearer foods time will tell.

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more foods on the market means more competition so maybe prices may drop on some of the dearer foods time will tell.

That would be nice and for all I know even possible but unfortunately AQIS clearance costs are prohibitively expensive.

I'm personally looking forward to the grazing diet.

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I hope they can formulate a grazing diet for mbuna/catfish etc too, not just marines.

The fish are looking great. Condition is back to normal for most fish (after my 2 weeks away on rations). They absolutely hammer the food like nothing I have ever seen at times. A real feeding frenzy. I'm still impressed with this food. I'm continuing to feed the Rift Lake Red/Green now after a full week on the Aegis. I'll feed the Red/Green as appropriate until it runs out before going back to Aegis again.

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I took a couple of photos to show what the food looks like.

This is the Aegis immune boosting food.

aegis.jpg

The food can easily be squeezed and rolled into a bigger pellet for feeding to larger fish. This is the Aegis made into a bigger pellet. I only used a small fraction of the amount of food in the previous picture to make this ball of food.

Squashedforbigfish.jpg

This is the Rift Lake Green and Rift Lake Red side-by-side. The Rift Lake Green has a more flexible and rubbery texture, while the Red is more crumbly. Both can also be squeezed into larger balls of food if required.

RiftLakeGreen-Red.jpg

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Hi,

I tried the red, green and immune and my fish ate it first go.

I feed a good fistfull to my frontosa and they smashed it and and filled right out. The malawis seemed to really go for it, but due to the size of the pellet it mostly went to the haps.

It is quite easy to feed also as you just throw it in and it sinks slowly. Disadvantage to flake and other popular pelleted food is that it floats unless you stick your hand in and cause I use sump filteration a % ends up in the filter.

Wish they would relase a smaller pellet size for fry!

Cheers

Grant

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Pricing will be interesting you can buy the 1.8kg Tub of Green or Red for approximately 50 quid in the UK. As a comparison you can get NLS Growth 2.27 for approx 56 quid. Thats roughly $74 versus $82-83.

These are only approximations from only a couple of stores.

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I just inquired about this food on an aquariums facebook page an was sent these prices, now I'm not sure if this will clearly give an "average" price across the board so only posting it to show and early indication to pricing. But going by this NLS is still miles ahead price wise

pellets $27

300g pellets $47

Algae pellets up to $56

Pleco pellets up to $47

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Just thought I'd post this as it is an actual quote of a price.... not about or upto or anything vague. It is from facebook answering a qestion about a 150g tub of food..... look it up on Facebook.

Fantastic Fins Aquarium there is a 120g Trav and it's $17.95 for the Discus or $16.95 for the tropical! February 10 at 4:04pm · Like

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To pricey for my liking :(

To compare like with like: 150g of NLS Cichlid from AOA = $21 = $0.14 per g

120g @ $17.95 = $0.15 per g from a "Bricks and Mortar"

Seems fairly competative..... Have to see what the 1.8kg tubs work out at.

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I was looking over an old food thread (on a different forum), and got to the bit where I was talking about one of the cheaper foods and the type of waste left behind. It was slimy and red, I put this down to a dye to enhance the foods colour rather than nutrition containing ingredients..... Then I remembered a thread where the colour of the waste NLS Thera A and Cichlid formula were discussed.

I really hadn't thought much of it until I re-read those threads. So I thought I better comment on the waste from New Era. All three formulae gave rise to a light grey faeces. They are clearly made from different raw ingredients, the colour texture and smell give this away. But the waste is still pretty much the same. Does this tell us anything? Perhaps it is some type of indication of the fish's ability to extract substances (nutrients) from the food?

Anyway thought it was food for thought. ( rofl.gif I know - teacher joke!)

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