For our last Tech Update, we looked at Rod’s Food, an incredible array of products for various fishes’ diets. For optimal health, many fish also require the addition of nutrients and chemicals that recreate their environment and the diet to which they are accustomed to.
Fish Solution
Fish Solution, in Blue Planet’s opinion, is one of the finest “trace element” supplements on the market. Trace elements are vitally important because they are the same metals, minerals, and vitamins found naturally in seawater. These are too often depleted by aquarium filtration, and are also used up by fish, who need them to live. After these elements are depleted in the aquarium water, the fish will suffer in a nutrient-poor environment.
Water changes for your aquarium will add some of these elements back as added from salt mixes, but dosing them on a regular basis is the best way to ensure a healthy aquarium environment. Fish Solution is one of the pricier additives on the market, but the results are incomparable. Soon after starting Fish Solution, you can expect to see better color, and it is also the only product known to combat and reverse what is known as “Hole and the Head” and “Lateral Line Deterioration”, abnormalities which involve the decomposition of the fish lateral line along its side and facial area.
Vitamin C
Why do fish need Vitamin C? For the same reason as we take it, quite frankly. A fish living in a captive environment, even under pristine water chemistry, care, and filtration will still be challenged by many things such as parasitic infections, bacterial infections, wounds, stress, etc. Just like with us, when we are down and out, our immune system suffers and the chances for us to become ill increase. Vitamin C addition to food, so it can be directly ingested by the fish, is the best way to keep them in fighting shape.
Garlic
Garlic isn’t just for your dinner, it’s for your fish’s dinner as well! When garlic was first introduced to the aquarium industry, I was more than skeptical. “Gimmick of the year,” I believe I said when I first saw it. However, when introducing new shipments of fish in our facility or into our clients’ aquariums, one can see a noticeable difference in the fish’s attraction to foods, which is crucial when trying to get stressed fish to acclimate and settle down.
In addition, garlic in the fish’ blood stream will have a tendency to confuse parasites and make their attaching, feeding, breeding, and spreading in the aquarium much more difficult. This, in turn, keeps parasitic infections at bay, which is always important in fish keeping.
Cyclop-eeze
Cyclop-eeze are actually a manmade microscopic crustacean that are dried, ground, and sold in powder form. These animals carry an extremely high level of Highly Unsaturated Fatty Acids (HUFA’s) and antioxidants. Because of that, these creatures, when introduced into a fish diet, supplement other essential nutrients and have a myriad of other health benefits. Fish tend to go bananas when these are introduced as feed, making for some interesting watching as well.
