[Aquarist007]

Originally posted by xJake


So, in conclusion, I've gotten my point across, or at least I hope. Feeding vitamins and dosing trace elements to maintain fish health is all fine and dandy, but I still haven't seen any demonstrations of conclusive evidence that it is a requirement of captive husbandry. This holds especially true when you examine the nutritional content of the many of the foods I've listed. Some are better than others, but as long as one feeds a variety of these food to their fishes, then a healthy nutritional input can be achieved.

I suppose I should specify that when I say "I feed w/e is available..." it's not as if I simply pick at random for each fish, because obviously that would never achieve a nutritionally complete diet. I am more selective about what I feed to which fish, with respect to what their diet is in the wild. I'm simply trying to say that vitamin supplements, while potentially useful, are unnecessary as long as a varied and natural diet is maintained.

As for whether trace element dosing is vital to a fish's health, I'm still not convinced that the uptake of these minor elements is significant enough to prompt everyone to begin dosing seemingly random amounts of trace elements that are provided from commercially available supplements. From my experience, there is no necessity to do this as long as relatively regular water changes are performed with a high quality salt mix.

Jake, one of our oldest successfull reefers on here PaulB maintains the secret to feeding fish healthy is feeding them live food----brine shrimp, black worms, whole silversides. He also states that a key component missing in their diet is the oils---in the wild they eat all the specimen including the guts which are laden with oils and minerals ect.