Buying bulk fish food, good or bad idea?

[ijankrom]

A local fish store has fish food you can buy in bulk. You just scoop what you want, weight it and pay according to the pound or ounces - something like that. I would assume one could save same money going this route. I don't have a big tank (25 gal) and currently only have about a dozen fish (5 are just fry). Does flake fish food go bad after awhile? I wouldn't want to buy a lot only for it to go bad and I waste my money. Would it be wise to buy bulk fish food for a small amount of fish, or buy smaller quantity (already packed)?

[mizzoutank]

it goes bad just like normal food.

I feed every other day and with the different food options (flakes vs pellets vs sinking wafers) it really goes a long way.

spice up their diet for their health and you'll stretch out your food supply naturally.

[Cliff]

You make fish food last longer by storing it in the freezer for future use.

I typically order about a year's supply at once to avoid higher shipping costs. I will keep about a month's supply out to use and the rest gets stored in the freezer.

[korith]

Moisture will affect the flake and other food over time. Will lower the nutritional value of the food as well. What I do when I have too much food is to seal it ziplock bags and put it in the freezer. Sometimes I will buy a lot at once due to price or if a deal comes by that I can't pass up.

[madagascariensis]

For the type of bulk food you are describing, it probably been laying around improperly stored open to oxygen for ages, and its nutritional value likely is seriously degraded. However, buying sealed, properly packaged foods in bulk and storing it properly isn't a bad idea.

[Indian Woods Angels]

I use a 4 pound bucket of Tetra in a month. If you don't use it the stuff gets little worms in it. I would only store it for around 6 months in the freezer myself. It tends to freezer burn on me. Dry flake freezer burns too. Weird though.

[ijankrom]

Thank you all for your input. This bulk fish flake food they sell is exposed to oxygen and I'm not sure how often they replenish/replace, so yeah it's probably not very nutritional and I'll stay away from. So for now it looks like I'm just buying the sealed packaged foods from my local pet store.

Where do you guys buy your fish food? I'll go online though often with shipping it's just as expensive if not more than if I just drove 3 miles to local pet store and got the exact same stuff there.