My thoughts on Nyos Instant Plankton Coral/Invert food- What's your opinion on it?

[Coralsdaily]

Hello Everyone, Steven here. Thank you for joining me again to discuss coral feeding. Today I will provide you my honest opinion on Nyos Instant Plankton.

Disclaimer 1: I am by no means a marine scientist or claim to be a nutrition expert for corals. I am purely expressing my opinion on the products. I welcome anyone with expert knowledge in this topic to provide your feedback.
Disclaimer 2: I was not paid or endorsed to provide the review. This review is 100% personal opinion.
If you’d like to skip the reading and hear my opinion and watch me dose this food into the tank, feel free to click the video below:


First, some facts:
This food is produced by German company Nyos. It comes in a bottle of powder weighing 60 grams, and is sold for $19.99 USD per bottle.

According to the label, the ingredients contains: marine protein (not really sure what that means), marine oils, algae extracts, phospholipids (fat), minerals, vitamin pre-mixture, antioxidants.

Guaranteed analysis: Crude protein 54.2%, crude fat 14.8%, crude fiber 1.3%, ash 20.8%.

So I have a few questions up to this point:

1. Why are manufacturers allowed to provide such vague description on ingredients? What exactly is marine protein and marine oil? Where are they sourced and what’s the ACTUAL raw ingredients? I don’t find this label confident earners.
2. What exactly is important to corals? Do corals really need fat? I can see fat being beneficial to inverts, but corals? If you have good insight in this please share.
3. Why is there such a high % of “ash”. Personally when I see “ash” I think filler. correct me if I am wrong but I don’t believe there is any nutritional value in ash, am I wrong? so why am I paying 1/5 of my money for something that has no value in it?

In my video, you will see that mixing this product with water is extremely frustrating. The fatty content is very water resistant. The product must be pre-mixed outside of tank, cannot be dosed directly to the tank as it doesn’t sink readily. I’d much rather Nyos just premix this product in a liquid form and sell it in a bottle of plankton juice.

the powder isn’t very soluble and tends to clump up on the surface- annoying to say the least

Lastly, for the money I find this product quite light in content and isn’t quite worth the buck for what you pay. The measuring spoon is tiny and the label demands a very high level of consumption which I absolutely disagree with.

Overall, I personally would not consider purchasing this product again. I think there are better products at prettier price point than Nyos Plankton. And I’d love to see the product designers to improve the label for more transparency in the ingredients, and reconsider the format it is being sold to help reefers easier dosing and feeding.
Happy to hear your opinion on this product.

 

[ichthyogeek]

Hmmm, it may be beneficial to add a little bit of water at first, instead of adding the powder to the water. Kind of like when you make any roux-thickened sauces: you add liquid (saltwater) slowly to the roux (in this case the NYOS powder) in order to prevent clumping.

1) Because it's easy. Consumers need to demand better of their food companies, or else nothing's going to happen. Marine proteins and oils refers to proteins and oils/lipids of marine origin. In the case of both, it's most likely coming from a mix of 1) fish/shellfish, 2) zooplankton, 3) phytoplankton. Could be anything from squid and fish meal, to a bunch of dried up Nannochloropsis really....

3) Ash = the stuff that remains when a product is burnt. Typically, it refers to minerals (maybe vitamins?).

 

[Coralsdaily]

Hmmm, it may be beneficial to add a little bit of water at first, instead of adding the powder to the water. Kind of like when you make any roux-thickened sauces: you add liquid (saltwater) slowly to the roux (in this case the NYOS powder) in order to prevent clumping.

1) Because it's easy. Consumers need to demand better of their food companies, or else nothing's going to happen. Marine proteins and oils refers to proteins and oils/lipids of marine origin. In the case of both, it's most likely coming from a mix of 1) fish/shellfish, 2) zooplankton, 3) phytoplankton. Could be anything from squid and fish meal, to a bunch of dried up Nannochloropsis really....

3) Ash = the stuff that remains when a product is burnt. Typically, it refers to minerals (maybe vitamins?).

Thanks for your input. For the marine protein/oil ingredients I figured as much. I guess being a very transparent world today I have been spoiled with the ingredient down to the atomic level so I have less trust when I see vague, blanket statements like those.
Interesting take on "Ash". Perhaps it would be a constructive feedback to Nyos to label "ash" as "minerals" or such if that is indeed what it is. Because when I see "ash" as part of analysis, I think of Taco Bell, where the taco actually has 10% meat and 80% ash

 

[Coralsdaily]

Hmmm, it may be beneficial to add a little bit of water at first, instead of adding the powder to the water. Kind of like when you make any roux-thickened sauces: you add liquid (saltwater) slowly to the roux (in this case the NYOS powder) in order to prevent clumping.

1) Because it's easy. Consumers need to demand better of their food companies, or else nothing's going to happen. Marine proteins and oils refers to proteins and oils/lipids of marine origin. In the case of both, it's most likely coming from a mix of 1) fish/shellfish, 2) zooplankton, 3) phytoplankton. Could be anything from squid and fish meal, to a bunch of dried up Nannochloropsis really....

3) Ash = the stuff that remains when a product is burnt. Typically, it refers to minerals (maybe vitamins?).

Update- I tried your method- add water before powder in, then add power, then add more water... didn't make a difference. The powder still clumped up making the mixing all annoying as hell. So, thank you for the suggestion, but no, the mixing experience is still a thumbs down to this product.

 

[ichthyogeek]

Update- I tried your method- add water before powder in, then add power, then add more water... didn't make a difference. The powder still clumped up making the mixing all annoying as hell. So, thank you for the suggestion, but no, the mixing experience is still a thumbs down to this product.

Just want to clarify a point here. When you make a roux thickened sauce, you stir and whisk in a liquid into the roux. In this case, did you do the following steps?
1) Add small amount of water (just enough to moisten everything) to mixing container
2) Add whatever amount of NYOS powder you were testing
3) Mix thoroughly until everything was thickened
4) Mix while slowly trickling in the desired amount of water

 

[sde1500]

Interesting write up. I think I’ll stick to reef roids or reef chili. Ash probably is a filler. Fillers aren’t always bad. Need something to hold it together as a powder.

On a side note, what’s the need for the aggressive number of links to your blog in the post?