Why don Aquadine flakes look like the flakes made by the other well-known companies?
Great question. Flakes can be made in a couple of ways. The thin wafers you see that are made by other manufacturers are produced in a process called double-drum drying. The feed ingredients are mixed with a lot of water to make what is called a slurry. When the slurry is passed (as a liquid) between two hot drums, it dries on those drums and then peels away in sheets that are broken up into the flakes that you buy. The Aquadine process involves making standard feed pellets with an extruder and pressing them into flakes without additional heating. We think that the water soluble vitamins are less likely to be lost when the feed is both manufactured and put in your fish tank. Also, it seems as though the attractants that Aquadine puts in the feed work better than those in the thin flakes. Those attractants are, incidentally, just a part of the natural feed ingredients used; things like fish meal and shrimp meal contain odors that fish really like.
