Understanding Fish Food Labels
By Neil Wegner

Short of being a nutritionist, as well as an expert on the various regulations in the numerous countries where the food is manufactured, reading & understanding pet food labels can be extremely difficult, if not next to impossible. Unfortunately the pet fish food industry is seriously lacking in regulation. In many cases ingredients are regulated to be listed on the label by weight on an "as is" basis. Simply put, ingredients containing large amounts of water, for example fresh fish, will be listed ahead of grains, even though the grain might contribute a greater percentage of the protein in the finished product.

Some countries like the United States have detailed definitions of different ingredients, yet there can still be an extreme range in the quality (e.g., digestibility and bioavailability of nutrients) within any ingredient category. As an example not all 'Krill' products are always equal in nutritional value. Some manufacturers (such as New Life Spectrum) use Krill that is fresh and that has been chilled immediately upon being caught. Others may be using Krill that has been lying on a boat for several days without proper temperature control.

Under the current regulations pet food manufacturers have to run feeding trials for pet foods such as cat & dog food. No such regulations are in place for fish food. Some countries also have regulations governing the naming of products for cat and dog food. Products named as a sole ingredient, e.g., Chicken, contain the majority of that ingredient (70-100%, excluding additives). Products that have a modifier added to the ingredient name, e.g., Chicken Dinner or Chicken Stew, contain 10-70% of that ingredient. Products named using the term "with" (e.g., With Chicken) contain 3-10% of the named ingredient. Products named with the term flavour (e.g., Chicken Flavour) often contain significantly less than 3%. Unfortunately the same regulations do not hold true for the pet fish food industry.

Some of the so-called "Spirulina Flakes' have very little actual spirulina in the food. The following food could legally be marketed as "Spirulina Flakes, but when one looks at the ingredients list you can clearly see that Spirulina does not make up a large percentage of this food. In fact the Spirulina content is quite low.
Ingredients: Fish Meal, Soy Flour, Wheat Flour, Oat Flour, Corn Gluten Meal, Shrimp Meal, Brewers Dried Yeast, Spirulina, Dried Plankton, Fish Oil, Vitamin Supplements. In reality there is very little Spirulina in the make up of this food, yet it can be legally marketed & sold as "Spirulina Flakes". A more accurate name might be Fish Meal & Four Grain Flakes. This is a good example of why one must always read the label closely, and not just rely on the manufacturers brand name.

Grains have their place in fish foods, both as a binder, as well as to help synthesize lipids & protein, but sometimes you need to read some of the manufacturers advertising with a grain of salt. Some manufacturers might state that other fish food manufacturers use so called "poor quality" fish meal as the main source of protein, and that the second ingredient will be some kind of starch, such as wheat flour. The manufacturer might then attempt to make you believe that this extra starch is cheap filler, replacing potential high quality proteins and fats. Upon closer inspection these same manufacturers do exactly what they are condemning others for doing. They too use grain such as Wheat Flour, and Wheat Gluten as both a binder, as well as a source of protein. The reality is that all fish foods need to use a binder in their food (such as wheat flour) or the food would simply crumble apart into powder. There are many ways to manipulate the ingredients label so that it makes your food appear to be head and shoulders above the rest.

As an example, if the manufacturer used "Fresh Fish" in the food, and that fish came from several different types of fish, one could simply list each fish species separately to make it appear as though the first 4-5 ingredients were fresh fish. By the time you get to the next ingredient, Wheat Flour (big surprise!), they hope that you see this as the 6th or 7th ingredient on the list, not the second or third. This is where the "listed on the label by weight on an as-is basis" comes into play.

Obviously it would be much easier to simply list the main ingredient as "Fresh Fish", with perhaps a list of the various fish used in brackets (Krill-Salmon-Shrimp-Herring-Cod), but that would mean the second ingredient in that fish food would now become Wheat Flour, with perhaps something like Wheat Gluten as the third ingredient. Suddenly the manufacturers comments about other manufacturers using cheap starch fillers such as Wheat Flour as the second ingredient rings rather hollow. If one was to combine the Wheat Flour (second ingredient) along with the Wheat Gluten (third ingredient) listed by weight on an as-is basis", and the water content was removed from the fresh fish, the so called cheap filler would now become closer to the main ingredient.

More slick willie gimmicks.

 There are virtually no state or federal agencies that actually check these foods before they are sold to consumers. A fish food maker can say pretty much anything they want, and place pretty much anything they want on a label, or their web site, who's to stop them? I'll tell you who, no one. It's a free for all out there, and the sad part is that many manufacturers take advantage of that fact. If it wasn't for the fact that many of them are based in the USA (the land of lawsuits), god only knows what they'd attempt to feed the public, or what they'd place on their labels. 

I used to promote a well know maker of flakes in the past and I honestly felt they provided a good quality fish flake.  I was wrong, and I was duped.

This manufacturer makes a VERY big issue on their web site about how low in ash their products are, and how 'bad' excess ash is in a food. They're right about one not wanting excess ash in a food, but the part they forgot to mention is that one of their main flakes (the one I was using) is very high in ash. My feed trials with L. caeruleus proved this to me, as the growth on their flakes was approx 50% of what it was during the same period when feeding New Life Spectrum. I began taking a closer look at their spirulina flakes, and what did I discover ....... it is the ONLY food that they do not state the Max. Ash content. Co inky-dink? I think not. No doubt that without me ever knowing it, these flakes added extra pollution to my tank water, and due to the high mineral content my fish grew at only half the rate as they did on New Life Spectrum.

See how easy it is to manipulate an ingredients label on fish food?
If one of your products is high in ash, simply don't state the ash content in that food. Problem solved!

Another very well known company uses smoke and mirrors on their ingredients list, the whole thing is such a jumbled up mess that it's difficult to tell what ingredient is where on the list, and they bank on that fact! Just like some of the other manufacturers, they clump several "fish" ingredients together to make a loooooooong list of their "fresh fish", then slip wheat flour in waaaaaaaaaaay down the list hoping by then most people have quit reading. Hey, it obviously works, right? In this company’s case, they actually call it "wheat flower", as though it grows in your garden.

Unreal ...........

This same company also has Shrimp listed as the main ingredient in their pellet food, yet fail to point out that the shrimp are raised on "shrimp farms" in Ecuador. These shrimp that they use are commonly called "white shrimp", and for the most part are raised on what's known as "intensive farms", where the conditions are extremely crowded, and most of the farms require the use of hormones & antibiotics to keep disease outbreaks from occurring.

Also, take a guess as to the quality of feed used on these "intensive shrimp farms" based in Ecuador?

Sheesh, talk about something I do NOT want my fish eating, yet the average consumer sees Shrimp listed as the main ingredient, and they assume the food is premium stuff.

Wrong!

The term meal, such as Fish Meal and/or Krill Meal is another misunderstood ingredient.
Many people think of Fish Meal as being a poor quality source of protein. This is simply not true!  Fish meal is used in a wide variety of animal feed applications including, pet food, poultry, and protein blends. Fish meal such as Herring meal, is an excellent source of protein and rich in essential amino acids, vitamins and minerals. High quality fish meals such as Herring meal, is processed from "whole fish”. Lower quality fish meals such as most of the "white fish meals" use only the heads, bones, and scales for their fish meals. The same applies to Shrimp meal, there is very little actual shrimp, and is mostly made up from waste material, heads, tails, and shells. For this reason it is also obviously much less costly for the manufacturer compared to a high quality meal, such as Krill or Herring meal.

One of the highest quality meals with regards to sources of protein and amino acids is Krill Meal. Krill Meal is an excellent source of natural antioxidants and pigments. Krill meal is superior to other crustacean meal products in terms of its amino acidic content, its attractant and flavouring quality, the capability of the fish to extract the pigments from the meals, and its immune stimulant quality. Not only does it have a high natural pigment content (astaxanthin), the astaxanthin also functions as an antioxidant. It has been proven that this pigment has a positive effect in the rates of growth and immune modulation in fish.
 
According to a recent study on lipid (fat) levels used in feeds for African Cichlids that was performed at the University of Florida, fat levels over 10% were found to cause serious liver damage if used long term.
The info in this report was relating to juvenile African cichlids, that were only 4 weeks old at the start of this 12-week feed trial. Even with very young fish, who require higher levels of both protein as well as fat, the higher lipid (fat) content found in the trout pellet diet (TP) caused these young fish to develop fatty livers, within a very short period of time.

Also, from this report;

 "Fatty infiltration of the liver has also been designated "the most common metabolic disturbance and most frequent cause of death in aquarium fish."

Now imagine what happens to the liver of an adult African cichlid when fed diets that contain excessive amounts of lipids. The juvie H. ahli (s. fryeri) used in this study faired much better being a carnivore, but it still showed a lipid accumulation in the hepatocytes. (<50%) The P. socolofi had extensive lipid accumulation when fed this TP diet.

More info from this report:

"With prolonged feeding of a high-energy, lipid rich diet, degenerative changes of the liver and death can occur unless the diet is corrected."

Those that know me know that I've been harping about this for some time, but perhaps when people read it first hand from a study performed by the Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences at the University of Florida, they'll understand why I never recommend using some of these various fish foods that are over 9% in crude fat. (for freshwater fish)

The connection between excessive lipids & fatty liver disease has been common knowledge in the aquaculture industry for many years, but the interesting part about this study was that it involved African Cichlids, which as far as I know is a first.
Suddenly foods that have 10-14% crude fat (min), don't look too appealing as an adult maintenance diet, do they?

The photos showing sections of the livers of these fish after being on a high fat diet was quite an eye opener. This study came about after some cichlid farms in south FL suffered from some large mortalities in both 1998 & 1999. When the dead fish were examined they showed fatty infiltration of the liver, heavy vacuolation, and severe necrosis of the liver, pancreas, and spleen.
It was suggested to the farms that they replace their feeds with one that had a lower lipid content (less than 10%) and supplement the feed with a vitamin premix. Clinical signs in the affected farms were resolved after implementation of these recommendations.
They also compared the nutritional aspects between pellets and flakes, with pellets being more nutrient dense, and more stable in water.  

Perhaps one of the most misunderstood portions of the label has to do with crude protein and fat, and how the industry comes up with these percentages.
Here is how the guaranteed analysis is calculated. First off the food sample is dried, which removes the moisture. The weight of the food after it is dried is then subtracted from the initial weight to get the percent moisture. Next the sample is put through an ether extract. Ether dissolves the fat out of the food, and the difference is percent fat. Following that, a Kjeldahl analysis determines the amount of nitrogen. This method assumes most protein contains about 16% nitrogen. Percent Protein is the percent nitrogen multiplied by 6.25 (the factor that results from the assumption of 16% nitrogen: divide 100 by 16 to get 6.25. 6.25 times the percent nitrogen gives percent protein.)

Then an acid and alcohol wash removes fibre, and the difference is percent fibre. The last step is to burn what is left over to determine the percent ash, the mineral content. If all of these are totalled and then subtracted from 100, which would be the total amount of the food in the beginning, percent carbohydrate is the result. For example, a food has 34% protein, 5% fat, 10% water, 9% ash, and 5% fibre. If added up, the result equals 63%. Subtract 63% from 100% and that will give you 37% carbohydrate in the product.

So what exactly does all this tell you about the overall nutritional quality of the food? To be honest, not a whole lot. Percent protein says nothing about the quality of the protein, only the quantity of nitrogen. The value of protein is directly related to the amino acid content. It doesn't tell you how that protein was processed, or if it's even in a form that your fish can properly utilize. The same holds true for the other ingredients.

At some point one needs to have faith in the manufacturer they are dealing with. In that regards, I have complete trust in Pablo Tepoot and his New Life Spectrum line of fish food.  

How many fish food manufacturers do you know that have been breeding & selling fish successfully (as a business) for the past 25 years?

How many of them have 800-1,000 40-gallon fry tanks on the go on any given week?

How many offer a 10-day money-back guarantee on their food?

How many of them have a public online forum where the president of the company will answer any & all questions about their product line?

How many of them have a CAUTION warning on each label of their flake food to ensure that the consumer clearly understands that for larger species of fish, pellet food is much better suited. (Due to insufficient food intake of flakes).

Answer – only one that I know of, New Life Spectrum. 

The bottom line is this, long before I started selling this food I had formed my own opinion about the pet food industry, and which fish food was the best product on the market.   New Life Spectrum wins hands down. 

I hope this has helped explain some of the manufacturer label terms, and marketing hype, that is currently used in the pet fish food industry.

References

1. North American Journal of Aquaculture: Vol. 66, No. 4, pp. 285–292. An Evaluation of Two Commercially Prepared Feeds on Growth Performance and Liver Condition of Juvenile African Cichlids Pseudotropheus socolofi and Haplochromis ahli