Gamma Frozen Foods and their Nutrition

Gamma Foods are a staple here at Quality Marine (and our freshwater sibling distributor, Aquatropic) and Gamma gets fed to nearly everything that comes through these doors, except staff, we think. All our QM Labs aquacultured species are reared on Gamma Frozen Foods along with Nutramar Foods. The reason for this is simple, these foods are the highest quality, safest frozen foods available for your aquarium denizens and they have a suitable food for nearly every type of fish and invert you're likely to have in your aquarium.

Gamma starts with only the highest quality, 100% natural ingredients, then rapidly packs, seals and flash-freezes them to ensure their foods are maintained in the best, most nutritious condition possible. The foods are then Gamma Irradiated, completely eliminating ANY risk of introducing parasites, bacteria or other harmful organisms into your aquarium. All the Gamma Foods are color coded, making it easy to select from their wide variety of foods for your specific fish or invertebrates.

Brine Shrimp are a great diet for a wide variety of fish, they are usually quickly accepted and consumed by even the most finicky eaters. The one drawback to brine shrimp, is that certain fish will need (or at least do better) with Brine Shrimp that have been enriched by feeding them a variety of things before freezing. To this end, Gamma offers Brine Shrimp Plus a variety of items. Brine Shrimp Plus Aloe Vera promotes healing of damaged tissue and is good for growth rates. BS plus Garlic is great for boosting immune systems and is often used as an appetite booster. BS plus Omega 3 is an amazing base diet as most fish depend on Omega 3 for a variety of metabolic purposes and immune responses, but don't actually make it themselves. Spirulina is a blue-green algae that has a lot of benefits in fish diets, making Brine Shrimp plus Spirulina another perfect item to add to a diet; it's good for growth rates, immune response, pigmentation, general nutrition and more. We often use it as a supplemental food for fish that are omnivores and need some algal content in their diet.

In regard to other enriched foods, Gamma also offers Copepods Plus Garlic and Mysis Plus Garlic. These come with the same health and appetite benefits, and both these base foods have more protein than Brine without enrichment, which is good for some fish, but not all. Copepods are amazing for smaller fish, like Dragonettes and small Gobies, while Mysis are generally a little bigger than brine and so it's easier to get enough food into slightly larger fish. Both these foods are greedily accepted by most aquarium fish, with or without the garlic. Copepods can also be fed to many of your invertebrates like Feather Dusters, Duncanopsia, Xenia etc.

In every feeding around here, we utilize a mix of meaty foods. These will almost always be a mix of the variety of Gamma Brine, Mysis and Copepods. To this we will regularly add Gamma Finely Chopped Mussel and Finely Chopped Prawn as the basis for our meaty diet. These foods round out our mix nicely and are chopped to be an easily eatable size for the vast majority of aquarium fish. A mix of these foods can be fed to everything from Anthias to Zebra Gobies and everything in between; think clownfish sized mouths and diets. Any and all of these foods, mixed or not are appropriate this size fish.

White Mosquito Larvae (which are actually midge larvae), Bloodworms and Tubifex are all excellent, high protein foods for fish that are carnivores in the wild. Their wormy shapes make them very attractive to even the pickiest fish (apparently, it's hard to turn down a wiggly looking meal when you're a fish.) All three of these are most often fed to freshwater fish, but they are also good for many marine fish. All these foods pack a serious whack of protein and thus aren't appropriate for animals that require a more balanced diet (like, don't feed a lot of them to your Tangs & Rabbitfish, it'll go badly.) Bloodworms are the largest food of this grouping, while Tubifex, Mosquito Larvae and Mini Bloodworms are more appropriate for smaller mouthed fish.

In regard to other foods for small, mouthed fish Gamma offers a great variety of things that are appropriate for fish as small as Catalina Gobies, some larger fish fry and even some of your filter feeders. Rotifers are very small and super nutritious. Cyclops (a type of Copepod) and Copepods (previously referenced) are also great; these are excellent choices for feeding things like baby Cardinals! Daphnia are a little bigger than the rest of these, but still mostly appropriate for very small, mouthed fish, and larger fry. Most of these are small enough to feed to Polyp Corals like Toadstool Leathers, Xenia, Parazoanthus, Knopia and Anthelia. Red Plankton are some of the smallest of these foods, and appropriate for all these inverts, as well as some of your smaller polyped SPS corals. Red Plankton contain carotenoids that are good for enhancing pigment on just about everything in your aquarium.

If you're looking for good foods for larger mouthed carnivores, good options from Gamma are the Whole Cockle, Whole Fish and Whole Mussel. These are excellent, high quality, protein dense snacks for things like your Triggers, Eels, Lionfish, Puffers and the like. Speaking of Puffers, you are all likely aware that they need some shelled foods to help wear down their ever-growing teeth; enter the Cockle-In-Shell product. These not only offer the protein this fish needs, but the mental and physical exercise, as well as the calcium and tooth wear you're looking for. This is also a perfect food for things like the Smashing Mantis Shrimp, which will relish bashing them to bits. These are also ideal choices for larger Anemones and the types of LPS that enjoy bigger meaty meals like Scolymia and Trachyphyllia.

Gamma offers two different Krill products. Krill Pacifica and Krill Superba. Nutritionally these are very similar foods and are excellent for a wide variety of carnivore fish like Thalassoma Wrasses as well as some invertebrates that like a large meaty meal, like smaller anemones. Both species of Krill are high in carotenoids like astaxanthin which will help your fish look their healthy, colorful best. Krill are also rich in many proteins and lipids that are vital to the health of your aquarium inhabitants. Which Krill you choose should be based purely on the size of the animal eating it. Krill Pacifica gets about a quarter to a half inch long, while Krill Superba will be between one inch and one and a half inches.

Gamma also offers three specialty foods. Marine quintet is made up of individual frozen cubes that allow hobbyists to feed a varied diet while only buying one product. The cubes included are Mysis Shrimp, Brine Shrimp, Finely Chopped Clam, Natural Seaweed Blend, and Krill Pacifica. This mix would cover the bases of a lot of different kinds of fish!

Another product that Gamma sells and is packaged in a similar way is Tropical Quintet. It is separate frozen cubes containing White Mosquito Larvae, Rotifers, Copepods, Brine Shrimp,and Daphnia. This is sold and used primarily as a freshwater food, and based on the sizes of the foods, could keep a wide variety of smaller fish very happy and healthy. It represents an ideal way to supply a really varied diet to your smaller freshwater species. Even though Tropical Quintet isn't marketed as such, it could also be used to great effect for most small marine fish.

Another one of Gamma's specialty foods is their Vegetarian Diet. This food is specifically designed to add a variety of greenery to the diet of primarily vegetarian fish, it contains Spirulina, Peas, Carrots and Spinach, all of which have been processed in a way to make them more digestible to fish. It is most commonly and correctly used for freshwater fish, though it could also be used as a supplement for some marine herbivores.

If you have a fish, Gamma has a food for it. Here at Quality Marine, we have trusted it and used it in house for decades now. It has proven to be as safe and nutritious a food as any on the planet. After having such great success with it for so long, we have no intention of stopping. If you want to feed your fish the same food that the professional aquarists here trust, ask your Local Fish Store about GAMMA foods from Quality Marine today.