Vitalis and Why

[Aqua-Digital]

Most of our regular readers will know all about World Feeds Vitalis Food which of course used to be called New Era. But getting the message across in regards to WHY Vitalis is often more complex, so with the help of World Feeds we have put together this important write up.

The Basics
Vitalis is a soft pellet or flake food that is so soft it can be molded, it is not a Jell based food which are basic poor copies of a feel rather than a process. When you open a pot of Vitalis it smells like a fish mongers for the exact reason you are looking at cold compressed “raw” fishmeal.

Who
World Feeds Vitalis started off as New Era Aquculture before a name change in 2015. They built their reputation by offering to public aquariums an alternative to grinding up hundreds of pounds of fish meal, which is both time consuming and messy and expensive. Public aquariums and research centers would not use the type of food you find in an LFS due to its very poor nutrition so they only had raw ingredients to go on. Vitalis changed this. Case study, Dubai Mall complex were spending over $10,000 a month feeding wet fish, fish meal to their tank stock, Vitalis could offer the exact same nutrients for $4,000 a month, with no waste or loss of nutrients. The rest is history.

Why
When you have a captive environment of fish, disease spreads fast, weak fish succumb fast and have no chance of fighting off even the basic outbreak of Ich, by feeding a diet that is renowned and tested independently for nutrition you are giving your fish a fighting chance of survival.

How
World Feeds use a process that is unique only to them called “cold compression” this means the ingredients (Human food grade whole fish not off cuts) are first ground down to a pulp, vitamins and extra amino acids added and from there is it steamed for a very short period. Other foods at this point are baked, the baking process at 160 degrees turns the pellet into a hard lump that all nutrients have been literally burnt out from. Some then go on to add a Jell to make it soft again, this does not put back the natural losses however.

Once the raw fish meal has been steamed to the minimum time possible the food is then cold compressed under immense pressure to create a pellet or wafer thin flake that is as soft as fishmeal and smells as it should - "very fishy". In the water the food does not break up, it remains solid. Flakes are large due to the process and stay formed even in water.

What
Vitalis ingredients comes from the whole fish and mollusc (shrimp) it does not use off cuts and does not use frozen left over residuals, the ingredients is from human consumption fish stock. Neither Vitalis or ourselves are aware of any other manufacturer that will use such expensive ingredients, but it is required to achieve the nutritional value public aquariums and research centers demand. So much so the food has to go through public aquarium in house nutritional analysis before they will feed it.

Case studies
1. Corydorras breeder in New Brunswick – over the years he suffered as many do, malnutrition fish losses using other brands, he switched to Vitalis and malnutrition became no existent. This is because the carefully balanced catfish diet had exactly what the fish needed to survive.
2. The anorexic Powder blue – We all know powder blues are notorious for being skinny and dying due to not getting enough correct feed. A tank fed on Vitalis marine and algal pellet brought the powder blues back to health and very fat within 2 months.

The enemy in the room
Frozen food is without doubt the highest client misconception out there, if it was so good would not the public aquariums been using it years ago? Frozen food offers a lot of visual effect and smell but very little in terms of nutrition, and negatively a lot of pollution, it is probably the most over fed fish food out there due to its nature.

Frozen food is Gamma radiated, this breaks down pathogens so it can be sold raw, it also breaks down the molecular structure of the food making it nutritionally negative. When it is fed the food creates a snow affect in the tank, micro particles that simply end up in filter socks or in rock structures rotting. Many users report their fish chasing it around looking all natural, however this is simply affect, if you want affect feed Vitalis flake it will do the same thing without breaking up and has a complex nutritional value to it.

So next time you need food, look up World Feeds Vitalis, give your fish true raw natural ingredients that is trusted by public aquariums who keep thousands of fish in captivity healthy.

For more information please email sales@aqua-digital.com