Cichlid pellet ingredients

[gladmaker]

I have some "Floating Chichlid Pellets" that says it's "Hearty food for all medium to large cichlids".
Ingredients: wheat flour, fish meal, wheat gluten, potato protein, corn starch, corn gluten, dried yeast, shrimp meal, soybean oil, monobasic calcium phosphate, lecithin, algae meal, riboflavin-5-phosphate and a long list of vitamins.
Why would fish food need wheat, potatoes, corn and soybean products? There is more wheat flour than fish meal. Looks like not much shrimp meal.

[sumpnfishy]

Rachel O'Leary does a good job of covering this.
https://youtu.be/734kXD08j0M

[gladmaker]

Explains my thoughts on the subject. I hadn't bothered to read the ingredients but just the label that said it was for cichlids. I will toss the remainder and be more observant of ingredients when I buy more.

[sumpnfishy]

It's really surprising what some of the major brands have. Stalwarts in the industry have some of the worst ingredient lists.

[mewickham]

It's not just ingredients that are a farce. Guaranteed analysis labels are virtually worthless. Crude protein is not the same as digestible protein, for example. You'll hear someone mistakenly say that a food is better because it has more protein. The dog food industry is famous for adding hydrolyzed chicken feathers to increase protein levels. But chicken feathers are 0% digestible. So, all that increased protein does is make your dog poop more. Or, you'll hear people compare protein levels of a dry food compared to a frozen food. They look at the frozen food and see that protein levels are substantially lower. That's because they are 80% water. You must remove the water-- you can do it mathematically-- to get a dry weight analysis for a true comparison.