Many aquarists tout the beneficial effects of using food supplements like Selcon, VitaChem, etc. I for one, am one of them. Selcon can be helpful as sick fish heal from marine head & lateral line erosion and other ailments. The purpose of these liquid supplements is to add additional vitamins and fatty acids to foods [...]
Many aquarists tout the beneficial effects of using food supplements like Selcon, VitaChem, etc. I for one, am one of them. Selcon can be helpful as sick fish heal from marine head & lateral line erosion and other ailments. The purpose of these liquid supplements is to add additional vitamins and fatty acids to foods so that your fish receive their proper nutrition. Typically these are added to frozen foods like seafood blends, mysis, etc. But when added like this, very little is actually absorbed into the food and most enters the water column leaving next to nothing for the fish to actually consume.
Not only do the fish end up receiving the short end, these extra nutrients that are added straight into the water can quickly pollute if not utilized by the micro fauna within your reef. As someone who despises micro algae growth on the glass panes, I also do not think too highly of additional and unnecessary nutrients. So how can we use supplements like Selcon to ensure our animals have proper nutrition, without overly-polluting the water?
One way is through gel binders like gelatin or agar. By using a gel base the nutrients are actually locked into the food, but not all fish (and aquarists) like gel based foods.
Another way is to utilize dry pellet food. This is nothing new, but rarely talked about among hobbyists. Like gut loading brine shrimp, we can “load” dry pellets by letting them absorb the liquid food supplement of our choice. Many pellets like Spectrum and Hikari are already very nutritious, but by loading them we can ensure our fish will be colorful and healthy. As a bonus, many fish readily take to pellet food making it an easy way to get these nutrients to finicky feeders.
The fish in the glassbox receive both Hikari Marine A and Marine S. Due to the size Marine A works better at absorbing the supplements, but the smaller Marine S can also be used. Many of our readers were fortunate to win both of these foods, in which case all you need is a liquid food supplement. Our first pick is Selcon, which has Highly Unsaturated Fatty Acids, Marine lipids, Vitamin C and Vitamin b12. This is also alternated with Fuel by Seachem. When it comes to the diet of marine fish three things matter: Quality, Variety and Frequency.
Add a few pellets in a cup or dish and then add 0.5-1 drop of Selcon for each pellet. After a few minutes the pellets will soak up all the liquid and become soft. Shown below is immediately after 10 drops of Selcon.
From there, use a spoon and add them to the tank. For small fish using the spoon you can actually cut the pellets in half or even fourths. It is very easy to do because the once hard pellets are now soft and moist. Here at GBD, the fish receive ~10 soaked pellets each day in addition to their regular varied diet.
I have had very good success using this method in helping our Juvenile Emperor recover from a small case of lateral line erosion. The fish is no longer with us as it was sold to make way for the Roaps Hybrid, but after ~5wks with Hikari Marine A supplemented with Selcon & Fuel the P. imperator was completely healed.
If you’re questioning whether or not your fish receive proper nutrition, give this a try. It only takes a few minutes and can improve the health and appearance of your fish.
