Nancy / Jean!
Thanks for the welcome!
Definitely try the flakes, I've tried it all and I know that Colin Grist is a big fan!
The Pellets can be any size I dictate within reason, we are set up to cut to diameters of 1.5mm, 6mm, 8mm, 15mm, 65mm and an elliptical pellet for sharks! The 6/8/15mm would be good for most adult cephs I would think whilst the smaller pellets for juvenile / small species! I've tried one of our shark pellets on an
O. vulgaris before (as it has lower levels of available copper) and it took it quickly without making too much mess so improved water quality is a real possibility!
Looking at the copper requirements in cephs will be the big issue when we come to design the diet, we've got it sorted for elasmobranchs which also find high levels of copper toxic so cephs will hopefully not be much more of an issue. As i've said we're all hypothetical at the moment and have not either researched this or produced anything, please don't think that we are just stabbing at it and hoping for the best!
Once we've got it nutritionally sorted we'll work on the attractants in the diet and this will generally be based around amino acids found in natural pray to elicit a feeding response. Once we've got that it's onto the palletability and then hey presto you've got a ceph diet!
Thales
I miss my pharonis!! They're awesome!!
The company I work for is
New Era Aquaculture, we're fairly well known in the UK now in both public aquarium / zoo world as well as the retail hobby sector and are hoping for the same in the US. We are available retail wise at the moment in Big Al's in Fort Lauderdale as far as I know!