Xtreme Aquatic Foods is a US company that throughout its forty-years experience has specialized in the nutrition of fish of all kinds.
We met them in Nuremberg, at their booth at Interzoo 2022, packed with all types of food.
Coming from over 45 years of work, this brand amazed us for the amount of products and the simplicity of their formula.
The video of Xtreme Aquatic Foods’ booth at Interzoo 2022
Before we continue, we have linked our video, in which you will see Xtreme Aquatic Foods‘ booth and the exhibited products. By clicking on the URL below you will be automatically taken to the beginning of the section. From there, you will be able to see the full report or select another stand from the time stamps in the description.
An exceptional testimonial is Cory McElroy, founder and owner of Aquarium Co-Op, being one of the best-known figures in the american aquarist community, thanks to both his physical and online stores.
Cory is quite a character, with his classic american style and his bubbly personality, he is a never-ending source of information for those who want to deepen their knowledge of fish, in particular fresh water ones: African cichlids, bettas and many, many more.
Whether you want a taste of this divulgative work or you need help with a new hobby, you can check his official online Youtube channel, or his blog, mainly focused on fresh water tanks. We suggest you to take a look at some of his videos on his Youtube channel, if you haven’t done it yet.
Natural supplements
Among the natural components that represents the baseline for all Xtreme Aquatic Foods‘ supplements, we have krill, shrimps, squids and herrings.
The company guarantees full sustainability of this type of fishing and one of its policies is to use products coming from their national territory only, the US. This also applies to tags and all the packaging materials.
Another widely used product is the spirulina algae, chosen as a base element for a wide variety of food. This type of algae is easy to process and to mix with other ingredients, provides an excellent nutrient supply, being made of almost 60% proteins, and is complete and well-balanced with many essential amino acids.
The list of ingredients is very wide and includes pea flour, rice flour, soy proteins, fish proteins, some yeasts and many more.
No probiotics
Xtreme Aquatic Foods states that its supplement lines doesn’t contain any probiotic. At first sight this might seem a deficiency instead of a quality. To explain it better, note that the word “probiotic” comes from the combination of the latin preposition “pro” (in favour of) and the greek noun “biotic” (of life), it refers to the biological activity of selected bacterial strains in the lactic fermentation, potentially able to balance the intestinal flora.
It wouldn’t be wrong to say that a supplement containing probiotics is better than others, because it would benefit the digestive system of the guest animal, improving and balancing its intestinal functioning and immune protection from pathogens, other than the better absorption capacity of some elements.
Therefore, why would Xtreme Aquatic Foods decide not to put any probiotic in its supplements?
It seems like an absurdity! Why would it deprive an animal from a nutrition that helps it to defend from parasites and diseases? Xtreme Aquatic Foods had used probiotics in its production for years, following the example of nearly all the large companies. Recently it decided to go further into the case with some targeted studies. Thanks to these analysis it realized that, putting a larger amount of bacterias than the competitors, almost all the live bacterias included in the raw mix, die due to the high temperature and pressure in the production process.
Changing the process was a vain attempt. The majority of the spores was lost in the final product, despite lowering the pressure and temperature of the machines.
It’s impossible to determine how many of these micro-organisms survive the production process to reach the clients’ flood, but they assure us it’s quite a negligible amount. This brought them to the decision of not putting any more probiotics in the products, but rather to add a patented Vpack (vitamin packet) in the whole line, to reduce the effects of stress and increase the immune resistance.
The Vitamin pack
The multivitamin pack includes Vitamin A, Vitamin D3, Vitamin B12, riboflavin, niacin, Beta carotene, folic acid, some Vitamin E, some Vitamin K and Vitamin C. Clearly the details and dosages of these elements are not known to the customer, because it’s a patented formula, but the list goes on.
We had viewed some footages of the food, where it was mixed in a mash and later given to the breeding tanks of a farm in Florida. It’s incredible to see how rapidly the fish pounce on the mixture. They seem to enjoy it.
No coloring
Not putting any coloring in their production, is a remarkable choice. We may find some different colors in batches of the same food, but this is due to the fact that they are produced with natural supplements, so it surely doesn’t imply that the food and its properties are deteriorating.
An Xtreme lineup!
The Xtreme Aquatic Foods‘ line of products for the nutrition includes food in various formats. We can find pellets in different sizes, wafer or flakes. What makes a food different from the other, as well as the Krill, Spirulina and added elements’ proportion, are the size and shape of food, that fits every species with the size, shape and composition preferred by the fish, in terms of flavour, morphology and nutritional needs.
We are going to show you some of the products that impressed us the most among the wide range of available food.
Crave Flakes
A mix of Spirulina and Krill in a flake format, in a 40/60% ratio, coming from a 25-year-old recipe. It is characterized by an high percentage of raw protein (42%) and the company patented vitamin pack, Vpack. It is specifically sold for the nutrition of Goldfish, however its flavour and nutritional properties makes it suitable for other species.
Spirulina Flakes
Mostly made of spirulin algae and some fish and vitamins, Spirulina Flakes is a feed specifically made for herbivorous fish. It contains raw protein (nearly 42%), raw fiber (4%) and fats (11%).
Krill Flakes
A food composed of krill, shrimps and other fish, mixed with wheat flour, yeasts and the now known Vpack. The protein percentage in this case is 38%.
Scrapers and Bottom Wafers
The main attribute of these formats is their sinking property. They are recommended for the ground fish, that are used to find their food on the bed. These supplements have a high concentration of fiber, which represents about 12% of the product. Then there are 5% of fats, 38% of proteins, to round out the composition.
Monster
This food is studied and developed to feed larger species. We are referring primarily to Koi carp and Arowana (this is an insight on Arowana, if you missed it). As well as other products, the Monster supplement contains about 38% of raw protein, 5% of fats and 6% of fiber.
Pellets PeeWee™ in 1.5 and 3 mm formats
These pellets are available in two formats, 1.5 and 3 mm, and meet the requirements of lots of species, even medium-large fish. In this line we also point out a type of pellet specifically design for cichlids.
Nano
It is easily deductible that this is a small-sized product for small-sized fish. It has a composition similar to other feed, but its protein amount gets to 52%. The addition of vitamins and natural elements makes it suitable for animals at a young age that need small-sized food, packed with proteins and vitamins.
Shrimpee
The nutritional composition of this food is slightly different than the previous ones, because it is mostly made of flour, plant protein and animals of marine origin. This product is highly recommended for all types of shrimps, both in freshwater and seawater.
References
As usual here is the link of the official homepage of Xtreme Aquatic Foods. We also invite you to read our Editorial on the exhibition, you can access the links of all the articles released so far, that will increase day by day, or watch our videoreport for this Interzoo 2022.
