Repashy Super Green is an excellent staple food for fish that require a lot of plant protein and fiber in their diet, and an equally excellent supplement for omnivores that benefit from the occasional emphasis on vegetable matter. There are many fish that fall into either of those categories. Algae eating species (such as farlowella catfish, otocinclus, siamese algae eaters, algae-eating gobies, blennies, etc…) benefit from a regular feeding of Super Green to supplement the alga they glean from the aquarium. Our tanks are often too clean for these fish to find all the food they need, and Super Green will make up the difference between what they are getting and what they need.
Fish have one-speed digestive tracks, so if the food requires more time to digest the gut has to be longer to do the job. Plant cell walls are hard to digest, so herbivore guts are longer to allow more time for the fish to glean the relatively low number of nutrients from the food. Animal proteins are easier to digest, so predator guts are very short compared to herbivores. Feeding a predator a food high in plant matter is useless to the fish because the short gut passes the food through it so quickly that the fish gets little of the nutrition in the food. Feeding an herbivore a food rich in animal protein is dangerous because the food digests quickly, but the waste remains in the gut for too long, which can potentially result in bacterial/protozoan infestations or physical blockages in the gut (both of which can create the symptom called ‘bloat’). This is why we need to pay more careful attention to what we are feeding herbivores that we do carnivores or omnivores.
Herbivorous fish are also adapted behaviorally for a plant-rich diet. The relatively low nutritional value of plants means that fish need to eat a lot more of them to get the food they need. The one-speed digestive track requires that the gut have food to digest pretty much all the time, so herbivores spend the vast majority of their time eating. Traditional aquarium fish foods foster a ‘stuff then starve’ feeding cycle that overfills the gut and leaves it empty for many hours until the next feeding. This down time between feedings is filled with fruitless searching for food, or (in the case of cichlids) can lead to over aggression. Fish in well-fed colonies of Tropheus sp. are not as brutal on each other as those in colonies of hungry fish. When food is not readily available, the feeding behaviors are reduced and the territorial aggression behaviors take over.
Repashy Super Green solves all of the problems associated with feeding herbivorous fish. The long-lasting food is available for the fish to graze on all day long, ending the ‘stuff and starve’ cycle. The food does not contain any of the animal proteins that are associated with gut diseases. And there are no indigestible binder proteins (usually gluten derived from grain), which can have the same problems as animal proteins in an herbivore’s gut. In fact, the protein values listed on all Repashy Superfoods reflect the actual useable, digestible proteins in the foods; not a combination of the useable protein and unusable binder proteins (this is a common practice in low-quality foods in order to list a higher level of protein on the package). And Repashy Superfoods go a step further for herbivores… the food contains the plant proteins separated from the hard to digest cell walls. This allows the fish to digest far more of the actual nutrients in the food than they would if they were eating plant matter in the wild (which would have the cell walls).
Any aquatic animal that can make use of plant proteins for nutrition will benefit from using Super Green. Use it as a staple for those plant-only algae eaters, and as a supplement for the omnivores that will benefit from the occasional burst of plant matter. You can even use Super Green to enhance the vegetable component of the Repashy Superfood omnivore diets (Community Plus, Shrimp Souffle and Soilent Green). Increase the concentration of vegetable matter in those feeds by adding in some Super Green to the dry mixes before adding boiling water to make the gel.
20% SALE on 2oz, 4oz and 16oz Super Green – while supplies last
I have a lot of Super Green in inventory after the ACA convention. This sale will continue until my inventory is down to the level I would normally stock. The sale could last a month or a day… just depends upon how much is sold. Take advantage and give Super Green a try!
