Brine Shrimps are an excellent food for aquarium fish that are carnivores or omnivores. If you are looking for a bulk buying option then you will most likely run into the Aquatic Foods Inc. Freeze Dried Brine Shrimp Cubes.
Before you potentially buy this product, you can check out Aquarium Blueprints’ review below.
AFI Freeze Dried Brine Shrimp Ingredients and Guaranteed Analysis
This food product is made of 100 percent brine shrimp, which will provide Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin D3 and Vitamin E for your pet fish. In terms of the nutrition values, the cubes provide 50 percent crude protein, 2 percent crude and more. You can find the full list of the guaranteed analysis below:
- Min. Crude Protein – 50%
- Min. Crude Fat – 8%
- Max. Crude Fiber – 2%
- Ash – 23%
Size Options and Pricing
The Aquatic Foods Inc. Freeze Dried Brine Shrimp Cubes come in different bag sizes: 1/8 pound, 1/4 pound, 1/2 pound, 1 pound, 2 pounds, 4 pounds and 10 pounds. You can check out the current prices for each size options with this link (#CommissionsEarned) on Amazon.
Expiration Date
The Freeze Dried Brine Shrimp Cubes does not have a expiration date printed on its packaging. What we generally recommend is that you feed all of the food contents in the package over a six months period.
When not in use, you should also keep the bag tightly sealed to prevent exposure to oxygen, which will otherwise going to degrade the brine shrimps during prolonged exposure. In terms of storage, you need to place the bag somewhere away from an environment with high humidity and hot temperature. Furthermore, the package should not be exposed to direct sunlight.
What fish will eat AFI Freeze Dried Brine Shrimps?
All kind of fish will eat the Aquatic Foods Inc. Freeze Dried Brine Shrimps. In our tanks, our Albino Corydoras, Guppies, Kuhli Loaches, Platies and White Cloud Minnows really enjoy consuming the food. Other types of fish that enjoy meaty food (such as Bettas, Cichlids, Clown Loaches, Gouramis, Koi and more) will most likely enjoy this brand of brine shrimps as well.
Pros
The biggest benefit of the AFI Freeze Dried Brine Shrimps is that it provide a lot of value. Although we got one of the smallest bag sizes at 1/4 pounds, we still ended up with a lot of cubes that will last for many months even though we feed our fish this product three times a week.
An individual cube alone is densely packed with brine shrimp. In fact, we have to rip some cubes in half as our many small fish can’t consume an entire cube worth of shrimps over the course of a meal.
Cons
The one minor issue we have with the Freeze Dried Brine Shrimps from Aquatic Foods Inc. is that the cubes can break apart easily. While this is fine in the aquarium, especially since we have small fish and fry, the cubes will also come apart easily in the bag. As a result, you will see a lot of crumble-like portions resting in the bottom of the see-through package.
Although you can still feed the crumbles to your fish, they can cause quite a bit of a mess as the brine shrimps will dissolve into the water column much faster.
Feeding Directions
Because the brine shrimps have been freeze dried, we recommend pre-soaking the food before feeding it to your pet fish. Otherwise, you could run into stomach issues such as bloating.
There are two methods to pre-soaking the brine shrimps. The first is to put a cube in a fishing net and then dip it into your tank. After a minute or two, you can simply turn the net over to release the soaked shrimps for your fish to eat.
The second method is to use a clean small bowl or container and fill it with aquarium water. You can then drop a cube into the bowl and let it soak for a minute or two. Afterwards, you can pour everything into your fish tank.
In both scenarios, you have to make sure that the entire freeze dried brine shrimp cube is soaked. So you may have to push it down a little bit in some instances.
We recommend feeding the Aquatic Foods Inc. Freeze Dried Brine Shrimp Cubes 2 to 3 times a week as a snack. We don’t recommend feeding more as its ash percentage is pretty high at 23 percent. For the uninformed, ash is considered to be filler and don’t add any nutritional value most of the time. If you are keeping omnivore fish (which eat both plant and animal matter), we recommend mixing brine shrimps with tropical flakes and fruits/vegetables (such as green peas) to offer a balanced and healthy diet.
Last but not least, we recommend using 1/3 or 1/2 of a cube (or smaller if you don’t have a large amount of fish in the tank) per meal. As we stated above, the cubes are densely packed with brine shrimps. After dropping in the cube, you should observe your fish.
If, after several minutes, you still see some of the brine shrimps in your tank and your fish aren’t showing any interests in eating more, then you should consider feeding less in the next meal time. You may also want to remove the uneaten portions from the tank if you don’t want ammonia, nitrite and nitrate spikes.
If, after several minutes, your fish ate everything, then you might want to drop in another 1/3 or 1/2 of a cube to see if they want more.
Recap
Overall, the Aquatic Foods Inc. Freeze Dried Brine Shrimp Cubes provide great value as you get plenty of this fish food even in the smallest available packaging size.
The only minor issue we have is that the cubes break apart in the bag.
To feed, we recommend pre-soaking the freeze-dried brine shrimps in order to prevent digestive issues such as bloating.
When it comes to frequency, we suggest feeding this fish food no more than 2 to 3 times a week.
When it comes to portion size, you should feed 1/3 to 1/2 of a cube in the beginning and then adjust based the amount based on your fish appetite.