Assessment 2: Ingredient splitting. Look for any ingredient twice on the list. If you were manufacturing a food and found wheat to be cheaper than fishmeal, you would want to use wheat to save money. But, you know the consumers want the fishmeal to be first on the list. So you split the wheat! Here’s an example: A fish food that has three pounds of wheat and two pounds of fish meal would have the ingredients listed in order by weight. To get around this, the manufacturer splits the wheat in half and lists it as two different forms of wheat. So that label reads fish meal, wheat germ, and wheat flour (in that order). This makes it appear to the consumer that the food contains a higher amount of aquaculture than any other ingredient.
Assessment 3: Protein percent. Let's say a company who is tailoring a feed to the prevailing market-climate wants to use four aquacultural proteins, and tosses in shrimp, kelp, spirulina, and squid meal. That would be awesome! But it could jack up the proteins to a level unsuitable for fish, or at least unnecessary (and expensive). Koi can't digest more than 32 to 36 percent protein in one pass. Feeding more than that isn’t necessarily a bad thing because fish will simply pass what they don't digest – it’s just expensive to pay for a fish food unnecessarily high in protein. So, look for minimums and recognize that an outrageously high protein percentage is more than what’s needed.
Assessment 4: Fat content. Find a food between 3 to 10 percent crude fat. The high end of this range is good for smaller fish, and the lower end of the range is good for adult fish.
Assessment 5: Ascorbic acid. Make sure ascorbic acid, or L-Ascorbyl-2-Phosphate is on the label among the trailing ingredients. It will represent a very small part of the diet but it should be added to any milled food.
Assessment 6: Immune boosters. Some foods are made with immune boosters. These are certainly harmless and they may very well perform as promised depending on which ones we're talking about. Look for any combination of the following supposed immune-boosting ingredients: Optimun, Aquagen, Nucleotides, Torula Yeast, Brewer's Yeast, Bee Propolis, Colostrum, Aspergillus niger, beta carotene, lactoferrin. Don't hang your hat on any particular ingredient as a miracle supplement or lifesaver, Just recognize that the addition of these items represents the manufacturer as a little more attentive and knowledgeable, and the food worth a little extra money.
Assessment 7: Color enhancers. Are there color enhancers in the diet? Look for terms like Spirulina, Bio-Red, BetaCarotene, Canthaxanthin, Marigold petals, Xanthins, Shrimp Oil, Synthetic and Non Synthetic Carotenoids, or Color Enhancers on the label. Generally, the shrimp oil is the most expensive. It performs as well or better than the synthetic carotenoids but either is acceptable. Spirulina cannot push color unless the fish are exposed to sunlight. None of these color enhancers are hazardous to fish but can make a fish with a yellow head more yellow or a fish with a tendency towards pink pinker. No color enhancer can replace the irrefutable contribution of genetics and sunlight to color.
Assessment 8: Ash content if stated. Sometimes companies will level with you and tell you the "crap" content of their food. Ash is what's left behind when you incinerate (or the fish digests) the food. It's almost all carbon and mineral. So the higher the ash number, the less likely one is to appreciate it. Generally, when ash is high, a smart label guy would just leave it off, and they are allowed to because it's not required on fish food bags.
