Let's Talk About Fish Food

My fish absolutely love the Xtream food.

It was $10 for half a pound of Pee Wee, included free shipping. Went through the facebook link and it is supposed to be a first time trial deal.

Speaking of food. I was on Kens fish website, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I was amazed out the prices. I usually buy food from Pet Mountain, but Kens prices are equal to or better than. Any of you looking to order some food, check him out and if you want lets get a group buy. His shipping is a bit high. He even has great prices on other things, like heaters etc...

Kens price are good. Just have to factor in shipping cost. If Xtreme turns out well I might just order the stuff in bigger containers from Ken's.

I guess I was unlucky with my order from Ken's. I won't order from him ever again after my experience. I won't bother with the details since everyone else seems to have no problems with their orders from him, but I was quite frustrated and pissed off!

I have ordered only one time in the past and did not have any issue. Then again it was some part or something was not a food purchase. Looks like some of the bulk bagged foods could be an issue with the wrong item being sent or damage occurring since it is in a bag as opposed a hard container.

They are cheaper on the Xtreme foods than to order from the facebook link approved vendor.

Betty wrote:I guess I was unlucky with my order from Ken's. I won't order from him ever again after my experience. I won't bother with the details since everyone else seems to have no problems with their orders from him, but I was quite frustrated and pissed off!

I would like to know what went down. Others experiences are always valuable

madness wrote:Speaking of food. I was on Kens fish website, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I was amazed out the prices. I usually buy food from Pet Mountain, but Kens prices are equal to or better than. Any of you looking to order some food, check him out and if you want lets get a group buy. His shipping is a bit high. He even has great prices on other things, like heaters etc...

I posted about group buy from him several months not a single response.

TerenceH wrote:

Betty wrote:I guess I was unlucky with my order from Ken's. I won't order from him ever again after my experience. I won't bother with the details since everyone else seems to have no problems with their orders from him, but I was quite frustrated and pissed off!

I would like to know what went down. Others experiences are always valuable

madness wrote:Speaking of food. I was on Kens fish website, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I was amazed out the prices. I usually buy food from Pet Mountain, but Kens prices are equal to or better than. Any of you looking to order some food, check him out and if you want lets get a group buy. His shipping is a bit high. He even has great prices on other things, like heaters etc...

I posted about group buy from him several months not a single response.

Sorry, I personally didnt need any food at that time.

Betty, please inform us. I have never bought anything from Ken. I just recently looked at his site.

No sweat madness....

Does anyone feed live foods? I feed grindal worms and I am thinking about trying shrimp.

TerenceH wrote:I posted about group buy from him several months not a single response.

For the savings of $4-$5 in shipping I would spend that in gas going up to Seattle, so I did not join up in the buy.

As for live foods, I use earthworms, nightcrawlers and crickets. Live brine shrimp are coming in season so I might get a few before my fish get too big to eat them.

I do use frozen foods. I have used brine shrimp, glass worms, blood worms, tubifex worms, beef heart, a frozen freshwater medley.

Well, first of all I will say that I like one of the foods -- a spirulina flake that I ordered before I got my tropheus since that's what they were eating before I got them and I wanted to wean them gradually to NLS. I had no problem with that first order.

The second time I tried a couple other pellet foods for my plecos and I needed some breeding caves for my calvus and plecos. It took two weeks for my order to arrive and three of the five caves I ordered weren't in the box and there was no explanation why!! One of those caves that I did get was cracked.

It took me several attempts over about a one month period to get the problems resolved.

I wasn't really happy with the food either. A lot of it was crushed and unusable.

Details and some photos are at this link -- you'll recognize my avatar, different username. . . . [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I have read lots of positive reviews of his food and service, so I don't know why I had such a problem. I just know that I won't try again. I felt it was bad business to send an incomplete order with no contact to tell me why or even if the rest of the order was ever going to be sent and no mention of refunding for the missing items.

PS. I still have some of that food pictured if anyone wants some. My fish won't eat it.

oh geeze that is pretty horrible. The entire issue should have been able to be resolved in a day, two tops. The fractured cave should have replaced or refunded regardless if a pic was provided. Sorry for you ruff luck and hopefully he steps up and does the right thing. I could prob use that food for snaillo but not sure when I'll be down south.

The bulk food in bags getting damaged does not surprise me. But it does show that it is roughly handled and possibly improperly packaged when shipped. All that powdered wasted food is basically worthless unless you are feeding some small fry with it.

The damaged product and not shipping everything with no communication is bad. Then all the follow ups you had to do because of bad communication on their part also bad. I would have been tempted to contact my credit card company and had them reverse the charges because the company was not willing to fix the problem. Funny I have use that line when having to communicate with businesses that have been difficult, seems to do the trick.

Wow, sorry to hear about the bad service and overall experience with Ken's.

Yeah, it was surprising to me because he has a pretty good reputation. I read a few reviews on Cichlid-Forum that sounded like I could have written them, but most of them give him high marks.

Oh well, there are plenty of other places to get what I need.

Ratlova, I pass through Spanaway all the time -- you can have that food whenever.

Interesting...

Does anyone know about quality of his food? I have read good and bad experiences.

So tempting because the prices on the bulk bagged stuff is cheap.

I'd be down to get some of his stuff to sample.

At $150 they do free shipping. It would save you at least $25 in shipping fees to go this way.

I looked at what they stock and could see spending around $40 in supplies with $10 for shipping, but could not come up with $150 on my own. A group buy in my area might be possible because there are quite a few in the area.

Well I will order with, Im looking at $150 worth.

I just bought food and water conditioner so I am in no rush. But let me know when you are ready, I can stock up on a few things.

Yea if I am going to have to drive down there it makes it a bit difficult for me. However I do not burn through food like you guys do I am sure.

Food for me lasts forever.

Our fish are not pigs!

Well maybe a little.

I could do with some of those freeze dried night crawlers and krill! I'm down

I have never used freeze dried worms like that before. Do you soak them first or just toss them in the tank? That is a lot of worms for a good price compared to live.

LIVE WORMS is the way to go.

I use the live worms, except during the winter the supplies almost dwindle down to nothing. I would get them from Fred Meyer once a week when I went grocery shopping but they had stopped selling during the winter. I would then have to head up to Walmart and deal with a limited , old, dying batch of worms. So the freeze dried are just an option I would consider.

DMD123 wrote:I use the live worms, except during the winter the supplies almost dwindle down to nothing. I would get them from Fred Meyer once a week when I went grocery shopping but they had stopped selling during the winter. I would then have to head up to Walmart and deal with a limited , old, dying batch of worms. So the freeze dried are just an option I would consider.

APFP has nightcrawlers my the dozen for ~2.50. I've found in my experiences nightcrawlers and freeze dried krill really help a fish put on the bulk. To answer your question I would just toss them in. The freeze dried krill I've had before has poked me to the point of bleeding but the fish don't seem to mind at all, so I think these worms will be just fine. I'm trying to get away from hikari pellet food which I have a bunch to burn through.. Thanks to DMD I've actually looked at the back of an omega one bottle and was astounded all the ingredients are actual fish, lol. so now I've got my hikari food mixed with a couple omega one (Shrimp pellets/marine sinking small pellets).

Always looking to diversify the food

I dont Hikari is a bad product but they got a lot of bad feedback about the use of MSG in their foods. The Omega One goes on sale so often at Petsmart that it is really reasonably priced and has good ingredients, thats why I use it. My experimentation with the Xtreme I have on order will be interesting. Maybe I will convert to it, AquaMojo's fish look phenomenal being fed on that stuff.

Does he exclusivly use that food? This was probably answered somewhere but life is busy.. yaddad addidah boi!

I have no real answer to that one. The scale of fish raising he does, is probably one that you wouldnt spend a lot on "treats" like some of do.

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If you go to Xtreme it has his picture and you can link to his site, but on his site it does not link to Xtreme under his links. On his Facebook page he has a link for Xtreme.

Found this quote form AquaMojo: "I feed all of my fish a mixed diet with Xtreme Aquatic foods as a staple."

It came form an old archived MFK post. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Man... I want it all!


Does anyone have any experience [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

He just says bits and crumble a lot in the descriptions, make's me worry if it'll be a messy food

Crumble is exactly that. It is for the small fish. Not messy at all, the bits are slightly larger than crumble. I feed crumble to my fry. Works great.

So do we got a date? I'm ready


Edit: My omega one marine flake's cost 13.99 at Sierra's for 5.3 oz. Ken is selling most of his flake at ~4.50ish a half lb. That's 1.5 times more food for a fraction of the cost. I'm sold. And as far as I'm concerned we should do this once, maybe twice a year!

Terrence? Madness? When do you guys think you'll be ready? It'd be nice if we got this out of the way before christmas

Well, considering that I am running out of food for my bigger fish, probably real soon. What are you wanting? And we can set up a time and day to get funds from you.

Anyone else?

Here's my list.

1lb Freeze dried Krill Superba
1lb Freeze dried earthworms
1lb liver flake
1/2lb Ken premium Spirulina max flake
1lb sinking pellet brine shrimp
1lb sinking pellet spirulina
1/2lb krill pellet 4.0mm


This puts me at about $100 before taxes

Right now I am pretty well stocked up, just got food and I have some Prime on the way.
The only item I might need would be a container of Safe for $7.95.

i just want a few small bags as samples. I am game whenever

1lb Freeze dried Krill Superba
1lb Freeze dried earthworms
1lb liver flake
1/2lb Ken premium Spirulina max flake
1lb sinking pellet brine shrimp
1lb sinking pellet spirulina
1/2lb Ken's Premium Soft & Moist Krill 1.5 mm

I shoulda just gave you that other 5 bucks cuz the replacement costs the same.. Next time

TerenceH wrote:i just want a few small bags as samples. I am game whenever

Didnt notice samples for sale. Did it say somewhere on his site that samples were available? Let me know, probably will order tomorrow.

Where am I going to pick up?

Portland... Shipping is cheaper.

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Where ever. I can meet in Burien at APFP.

Works for me! I need to ask him a couple of questions so I will call him first thing in the morn.

1 each all in 1/2lb sizes

Ken's Premium Spirulina Garlic & Paprika Flake
Ken's Tropical Green Granule 1 mm
Ken's Premium Super Color Crumble #1

I hope it is enough.

TerenceH wrote:1 each all in 1/2lb sizes

Ken's Premium Spirulina Garlic & Paprika Flake
Ken's Tropical Green Granule 1 mm
Ken's Premium Super Color Crumble #1

I hope it is enough.

Sounds good, that will be $12.

Anyone else, or anything else?

I am wondering if I should get 1lb sizes. Any advice?

TerenceH wrote:I am wondering if I should get 1lb sizes. Any advice?

If i use the food as a regular staple, I got 1lb or more, if it is just to feed occasionally as a change of pace, I got 1/2lb. Plus, for my fish, I mix all the food together. Once in a while I will feed each one of the foods separately so that they dont get use to just one type in the mix.

Ive seen the mix, actually looks pretty good. Tempted to reach right into the container and start munching on the stuff.