# What is the best dry Fish food for Neon Tetras?



## miogpsrocks (Sep 3, 2015)

What is the best dry fish food for neon Tetras? 

I have given them goldfish food and they spit it out. I have given them betta food and they spit it out. 

They don't seem to like anything I have given them. 

I need something that is dry food since I will have to use an automated fish feeder while traveling and I heard that the frozen food may have diseases or parasites. 

I purchased some tetra tropical flakes and pellets online but they have not arrived yet. If that fails, is there any food which you have found neon tetras prefer? 

Thanks.


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## rtfish (Oct 2, 2014)

I can't answer what is "best" but my small school of 8 do fine with the TetraMin Tropical Flakes I throw in. I do however have a HOB and as soon as the HOB flow pulls the flakes down they go after them. I don't see them going to the surface when the flakes first go in like a guppy or molly would, etc.


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## hollo (Jun 14, 2014)

I feed my Cardinal Tetras (not the same I know but similar) Omega One Color Mini Pellets: http://www.omegasea.net/products/nutrition/color-mini-pellets

GREAT INGREDIENTS first five are fish and shrimp. The one thing is as rtfish mentioned they don't go to the surface so much, but attack the food as it sinks. The OMega One pellets are good because they sink slowly.

It may take a while for fish to get used to new food. Keep up with offering whatever food you choose, daily at 'dinnertime', eventually they'll get hungry enough to eat it and they'll get used to it. Good Luck!


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## sohankpatel (Jul 10, 2015)

I have other fish that shred flakes and my neon tetras eat the falling pieces, I feed Omega One, read the ingredients, the first few should be fish, not fish meal, but fish.


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## mattinmd (Aug 16, 2014)

So, tetras are neither goldfish nor betas.. they're tropical fish, so you should be feeding them a tropical or community type fish food.

As for brands, there's a lot of debates on what's best. I personally like Omega one and New Life spectrum, but I also use tetra foods. (and hikari sinking wafers for my bottom feeding cories, but that's not really tetra appropriate).

Most of the specific products I use from these companies are more vegetable oriented for my livebearers, and aren't really appropriate to your more meat-centric tetras, but all of these brands make a variety of products. 

Pick something labeled for tropical or community fish from these brands and you should be fine. ie: omega one freshwater flakes ("for all tropical fish"), Tetramin tropical flakes,etc.. 

You should be able to feed flakes or small, slow sinking granule foods. Don't do larger pellets of any sort. I haven't tried Tetra's crisps, but I think they are more suited to larger fish.


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## WaterLife (Jul 1, 2015)

My group of 40 cardinal tetras are kind of lazy eaters. They aren't scared or picky, they just don't "attack" food, they just swim around and slowly eat food that floats by their mouth. I do overfeed though so that might be why mine eat lazily (they aren't fat, just not starving). So for my case, flakes work best.

I use Ken's Fish flakes as they are a great deal and have great ingredients. Just as cheap as the cheap-o brands, but MUCH better ingredients, plus a lot of them have probiotics.

For my other fish like rasboras and rainbows they will take small slow sinking pellets like new Life Spectrum. I would advise only getting .5 mm pellets, the 1mm are kind of too big. NLS small community formula .5mm.

Most of Omega One pellets are 1.5mm, except the micro ones which are .5mm and smaller (they don't label sizes). One word on Omega One foods, they have been said to list ingredients and their percentages by WET weight, so their ingredient list can't be trusted, since when the ingredients are weighted DRY like they should be, the ingredients that are high on the list are actually much lower on the list making the main ingredients out to be the usual crappy wheat, yeast, "meal", etc.. I do still use some of their stuff when the price is right, but it's usually too high priced for ingredient list you can't trust.
Better off paying for NLS.


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## BigJay180 (Jul 20, 2014)

New life spectum flake ground up, or maybe the small fish stuff.


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## BigXor (Dec 15, 2014)

TetraMin Tropical Flakes

I put the flakes in a Parmesan cheese shaker and they come out the right size for the fish.

They also like Hikari micro pellets, but you have to feed a little at a time or they just drop to the bottom. I have cory's that take care of anything that makes it to the bottom.


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## mattinmd (Aug 16, 2014)

WaterLife said:


> One word on Omega One foods, they have been said to list ingredients and their percentages by WET weight, so their ingredient list can't be trusted, since when the ingredients are weighted DRY like they should be, the ingredients that are high on the list are actually much lower on the list making the main ingredients out to be the usual crappy wheat, yeast, "meal", etc.. I do still use some of their stuff when the price is right, but it's usually too high priced for ingredient list you can't trust.
> Better off paying for NLS.


All that is fair, but it is worth noting that these criteria for "best" are based on a particular persons interpretations (albeit pretty good ones) as to what is healthiest for fish. If your desire for best is based on health, then these are good criteria... However, it looks like miogpsrocks is looking more for fish acceptance of the food...

Also, the same source of information also rates fish foods based on those health criteria. Neither New life spectrum nor Omega one has any products that meet that same person's 5-star category, and there are no foods that meet their 6-star category.

They rank most omega one products, including the Freshwater flakes as 3 star (with a few veggie oriented products being 4 star), and all of the New Life Spectrum products as 4 star. There's a lot of 2,1 and zero star products out there...

If you really want to read a lot about ingredients in fish food, and some opinions on their relative merits, this is an detailed resource:

http://www.oscarfish.com/fish-food-analysis.html


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## WaterLife (Jul 1, 2015)

mattinmd said:


> If you really want to read a lot about ingredients in fish food, and some opinions on their relative merits, this is an detailed resource:
> 
> http://www.oscarfish.com/fish-food-analysis.html


Yep, Oscarfish is a really great source, breaking down the nutrition and ingredient list for everyone to understand. I have learned a great deal about fish food through that site as well as many other sources.

As for fish acceptance, it is true, although NLS is a high quality product, pretty much ALL of my fish prefer the cheaper, lesser quality ingredients, foods. They prefer the cheap stuff over Omega one also! My Arowana wouldn't take to NLS at all and would only eat Hikari (based on ingredients list, they are overpriced) and frozen foods (supposedly not the most balanced diet for daily feeding, even for carnivores, so they say). Same with Repashy and Pedigree foods I have used, the fish actually like to eat the cheap foods more (even cheap foods they aren't accustomed/used to).

Then again, a lot of the cheap foods/lesser quality ingredients, do you use attractants in their foods so it's pretty much like junk food, they taste better than healthy foods, but they aren't that great for your health.

All my bottom feeders love the Wardley (only $4 for 9oz. at Walmart) shrimp pellets that breakdown to soft mush. I guess they like it because they are soft and easy to eat (but I do feed soft/moist pellets from YFS also and they still prefer Wardley).

Sort of a toss up I guess. What they like that's not really healthy (nutrition is debated I guess, but clearly from there are unhealthy ingredients within, such as additives that are linked to health problems or just very poorly digested and extremely low nutrition fillers) or force to only have a diet of healthy foods (they might prefer the "junk food", but if they are only fed healthy, then that's what they will eat). If I had to go with one or the other, I personally would go the healthy route if you can afford it (better nutrition foods do mean the fish technically don't need to eat as much as feeding more, lesser nutritious food).

BUT, we can do both, which is what I do, I feed a large variety of foods from healthy, to frozen, to the cheap stuff (haven't fed live foods yet).
All depends on what you are after

Some of Kensfish foods are right inbetween (fish like most of it, some bad ingredients, some great, plus color enhancers, vegetables, garlic, etc), but it does depend on which foods you get. Some the fish love, some don't like at all, some have great ingredients, some don't, etc.
If you know how to read ingredients correctly, Kens does have some great food choices at good prices.

Cheers! :icon_smil


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## DaveK (Jul 10, 2010)

I'm not too much on the various flake foods. For my small tetras I use Hikari micro pellets. That being said, I think any reasonable quality dry fish food will work just fine.


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