All my research when starting with aquarianism pointed to a variety of fish food to strengthen fish and maintain their appetites. Could you live on salad every day? Well, some of you could, but let's not go there. A mix of meat, dairy, vegetables, and fruit gives us humans the widest range of nutrients possible. The same is true for fish (or my Beagles, for that matter).

I've been toying with a few different kinds of food. Pellets (great success). Crushed flakes (great success). Freeze-dried bloodworms (great success). And frozen bloodworms (thawed, of course; great success -- their favorite, in fact). I'm about to try frozen daphnia and frozen brine shrimp.

What has been an abject failure is Marineland's Bio-Blend. If anybody reads this blog, please note that Bio-Blend Tropical pellets (more like nuggets) are far too large for Tetras. They wig out when they get them, but the pellets expand to 4 or 5 times their size when wet, which will occur only after ingested at the rate my fishies eat. This means distended bellies and massive amounts of fish poo. The pellets sink fast, so even my ravenous Tetras can't get to everything before it falls into the substrate, increasing the amount of bioload and more of a mess I have to vacuum out of the tank.

Big thumbs down to this highly touted fashion food for fish. It might be great for larger fish, but it's just not very practical for Tetras. Be warned.