Month: May 2022

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Foods for Freshwater Aquarium Fish

Last Updated on June 9, 2022 by stormvisions

I have had aquariums of one sort or another most of my life. There is something about that encapsulated ecosystem with plants, fish, shrimp and other critters swimming, tunneling or crawling about that captivates me.

I currently have a 75 gallon aquarium with a variety of critters and figured I’d share some of my favorite fish foods. This post includes Amazon affiliate links.

Repashy

I have some fish that are grazers, biofilm eaters and bottom feeders that often get neglected in the aquarium. These include Otocinclus, Pygmy Corydoras, and Stiphodon Gobies like the beautiful Blue Neon Goby. I decided to try Repashy Gel Foods to supplement these fishes diets and find them to be exceptional. I keep mine in the refrigerator and when needed mix a little powder with hot water in a small heat proof dish. Once it is form I cut a suitable sized chunk and drop it in. The food can also be poured on a piece of driftwood or other aquarium safe surface and once dry put it in the aquarium. The fish love it and all my picky eaters are plump and healthy.

Tip: For firmer gel use less water. If the gel is a little softer than I like I can firm it up two ways. I put it in a sandwich bag in the refrigerator, on a paper towel. This wicks off some of the water and firms it up in a few hours. I have also put my heat proof dish in the oven on the lowest setting and set a timer. After an hour or so I end up with an extra firm disk (round dish) that the fish can pick at for a day or so.

Here are a few of my favorite Repashy items:

Repashy Soilent Green – great for grazers and fish that like plant matter, algae and biofilm. My Otocinclus and Stiphodon Gobies love this, but everyone including the Gouramis, Cardinal Tetras, Pencil Fish, Endlers, shrimp and dwarf crayfish will munch it too.

 

 

 

Repashy Community Plus – is a great food for omnivorous fish and inverts of all types. I alternate feedings with the Soilent Green. Sometimes I mix them, or create two batches at the same time and quickly pour them into one dish for a swirl of two kinds of food.

 

 

 

There are many more varieties available at the Repashy Store which I highly recommend. There are also food for reptiles and salamanders which are more meaty or insect heavy and might be suitable for certain types of fish. Be sure to let me know if you try any of these awesome foods.

Freeze-Dried Foods

Freeze-dried foods can fit a niche when you don’t have access to live foods, or frozen. I generally alternate them with flake, tablet, gel and frozen foods to offer some balance and avoid bloat. Which types of dry critters you use will vary by the type of fish you have but here are a few currently on my shelf.

Hikari Bio-Pure Freeze Dried Blood Worms – Blood worms are actually the aquatic larval phase of one or more types of insects, most commonly the midge fly. Fish love them fresh, freeze-dried or frozen – though I find the frozen tend to ‘bleed out’ as the freezing process breaks the cell walls. They should not be used alone as they do not provide a complete diet.

 

 

Tip: I sometimes soak freeze-dried foods in a container first and then pour them in to make sure the guys on the bottom get some. You can add vitamins like Vitachem to the water you are going to soak them in. When I have had sick fish and didn’t want to dose the whole tank I have soaked them in ‘garlic water’ – water I let sit in the refrigerator with a smashed clove of garlic. You can use Garlic Guard instead. The food is essentially a sponge so you can experiment with adding other things to the soak water like spirulina algae and color enhancers and then feed these powered-up foods to your fish.

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The Battle Nobody Wins

Last Updated on June 12, 2022 by stormvisions

people arguing
Image Credit: Wallpaper Cave

If you think what I’m about to say is about you, it isn’t. I am speaking in general terms about the craziness in the world as I see it. We live in a time where posting an opinion on social media easily draws the ire of people who have become increasingly hostile over real and imagined offenses. Often the real offenses are magnified so much that something that should have been a conversation seeking a solution instead attracts swarms of e-warriors ready to do battle to the death. Nothing but total humiliation and destruction of our opponent will satisfy us. It feels like we are in a video game where people vie to score points against the cartoonish figures we create and label. We are good and right, and they are evil and wrong. Listening to people is too much work; instead we create our boxes and trim the people we disagree with until they fit in the box we have already prepared our arguments against. That’s what I hear when people say “the left” and “the right” and of course those who aren’t ‘left enough” or “right enough” are traitors.

When you don’t listen you don’t have to think. You make the people who disagree with your view fit in the box, then take your collection of rocks off the shelf and cast them at the enemy.

This seems like madness to me.

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How We Think

Last Updated on June 12, 2022 by stormvisions


Despite what we think, we don’t usually react to the world around us. The ‘real world’. We react to the unique model of the world we have in our heads. Our experiences help build that model, as do any ideas and dogmas we adopt. We program our brains and then our brains react to events through that programming. This is the reason why people of different political persuasions can look at the same world and see it so differently, and why some believe in wild conspiracy theories that cannot withstand careful examination. We are, each of us, a world unto ourselves. There are some benefits to thinking as we do. We can process things faster without having to minutely analyze each bit of information in realtime. But it is critically important that we take care to evaluate ideas, especially those that appeal to our emotions, before accepting them, and if others have ideas which conflict with our own, we should listen and evaluate them to determine if we need to update our model.