Fritz Aquatics has today announced that they have reached an agreement with Sea to Sea Aquaculture and World Feeds to exclusively represent Vitalis in the USA. Vitalis Aquatic Nutrition is a British-made range of complete and balanced diets for all tropical, marine, and coldwater fish. Its produced by UK-based World Feeds Ltd and is known for its cold extrusion manufacturing techniques, soft texture, and high-quality ingredients, making it the go-to dry food diet for public aquaria, aquatic stores, and hobbyists around the world.
Shawn Hale, International Brand Manager of Fritz Aquatics is excited about the new partnership, the opportunity to return it to the US and what makes it different.
“World Feeds’ process of making the food is so unique because they make the food using their own in-house engineered and designed machinery which uses low-temperature extrusion techniques to create soft malleable foods making them easier to digest and much easier to add critical medications to when fish get sick,” he said.
“This combined with their selection of high-quality ingredients obtained from registered suppliers and sustainable sources makes the food much more attractive to fish and gives them more nutrients. Some of our biggest challenges in keeping fish are attracting them to eat healthy foods without overfeeding and polluting the system causing undesirable parameters and excess algae. In some cases, this can cause disease and ultimately fish and coral loss.”
“In the Public Aquarium world, many facilities use “Wet Fish” and it takes 10x the amount of Wet Fish to come close to the nutrition offered by Vitalis Foods. This creates a lot of waste in the system, pressures the filtration, and causes extra labor preparing foods, and maintaining the filtration. And it’s the same in the hobby world, only on a smaller scale.”
“I feel like it’s an amazing opportunity to provide a better solution to both professional and hobby sides. It gives them a better experience, healthier fish and coral, and less maintenance which is the part that makes aquarium keeping less fun. Especially in the hobby side of things it can be difficult to medicate the aquarium when fish get sick, you end up having to dose the water to get the medication to the fish. Vitalis is soft so it’s easy to add the medication to the food.”
“I have read and heard lots of feedback on this being a big benefit to Public Aquariums and am excited to explore how we can help hobbyists do the same with the medications that Fritz already offers. It feels really good to offer something that can create such a positive impact on our customers and the hobby of aquarium keeping.”
What we think
We have used Vitalis since its conception, visited the factory, and it’s one of our long-term favorite foods for both fresh and saltwater fish. It’s an established brand in the UK and is known for its giant flakes, soft pellets, and pioneering Grazer rings that stick on the glass via suckers. You can tell a lot just by smelling your dry fish food diets and Vitalis has such a strong, alluring smell, which is part of what attracts it to many difficult feeders too. Vitalis knows fish nutrition intimately, as a company they focus purely on that and it shows in the ingredients they use, the quality of their foods, and the results. It’s great to see Fritz bring Vitalis back to the US and the brand has a background in the marine aquarium industry as one of the directors used to manage a world-class saltwater fish hatchery. It’s absolutely proven.
Arrival time
Fritz Aquatics are starting the reintroduction of Vitalis by offering it to Public Aquariums first. This, says Fritz, is so that they can begin to work with the professionals in our network and get their feedback on best practices for use. This will also give World Feeds time to build the appropriate amount of stock to satisfy the demand from the hobby in the US. It’s going to be a busy time for Fritz in 2023/2024.
