Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

What are people using as feed for their fish?

I started my silver perch on some commercial pellets (generic) that i picked up on ebay.

I then started feeding them chicken pellets (i know this sounds weird) becasue thats all i had around.

They seemed to like it and grew quite well. they tend to dissolve quite easily though, but the yabbies tried hard to clean up after me.

As i mentioned in the perch section i found they like "greens" like lettuce and especially baby spinach.

And i try to give them as many worms as i can spare from the worm compost bin.

I'd be eager to hear what other people are feeding.

Steve

Good topic Steve... My fish generally get a diet almost exclusively of commercial pellets at the moment because I'm lazy, but they do love snails, and I have looked into snail farming as a major feed suppliment. The only problem with snails as feed is that they are surprisingly slow to grow and you would need a very large area of snail farm to feed the fish..

There are a few different recipes for home made pellets around, and some are very simple. Some of the most simple pellets are made from wheat (or whole wheat flour), sprouted wheat, eggs, sea salt, and enough water to make it into a dough. This is than passed through a meat grinder or pasta machine..

I've posted a link to some recipes on the downloads page under the links section or here if you prefer.

Thanks Joel,

am looking at the PDF now.

I tried once making some feed. In hind sight i would reccomend any attempting this to;

1) make sure the missus is out (the smell can be quite.....fragrant)

2) make small quantities of various recepies and follow quantaties of gelatine (most of them use it) very closely. the is a very fine line between it setting and not.

I made one BIG batch (quite badly) and i havent attempted it again yet. it dissolved WAY too quickly and made a huge mess of the water

BTW if you read the side of the gelatine packet you will notice that it is almost 100% protein. which is good for our fishies and hence dinner plates

Joel,
that PDF was GREAT. Very informative.

I'll be trying a new batch as soon as i can get the girlfriend out of the house

Where do you buy your commercial feed from and in what quantity?

I've found it really hard to source both fish and feed in smaller quantities, most web sites i find are aimed at aquaculture business and its like "how many hundred kilo's were you after?"

Thanks again

Will post a recepie that i have made once i get one perfected.

Hi Steve,

We are interested in home-made diets for all of our animals. While we have yet to begin growing fish, we've given some thought to some of the options including:

- Duckweed - see my post on Plants - floats on top of the water
- Worms - some species are more palatable than others
- Maggots - very quick to produce

The benefit of these fish food options is that they won't soil the water, they are all high protein and they all come in nice little bite-sized pieces

On the subject of maggots, if you thought that cooking up a batch of fish food might get you into strife with your other half, don't let her catch you breeding maggots.

Yeh, i think the live food would be the best.

i might give the maggots a miss though. i'd get into too much trouble

Steve

Steve, I have found that here around the south side of Brisbane most Produce Agents, the types that sell horse feed etc have 25 kg bags of "Native Pelletts" as they are called - for feeding native fish kept in dams etc. Cost $50.00 for a 25kg bag.... Label says things like 40% protein but no real detail on what the contents are. I am trying to find out more and I'll post it up when I find out. I am very interested in Garys ideas about the worm farm etc, but I think I will give the maggotts a miss !!!

Hi All
Feeding makes for a very interesting subject, cost is one of my main concerns so is nutritional content and whether the contents are nataral or chemical. Grains have a high protein content and when soaked are even better because the proteins are turned into amino acids this saves our body having to do it so it is easier and quicker to digest. They are extremely cheep and if they were supplimented with worms maggots or snails I think they would be an exellent fish diet. Does anyone feed their fish grains as my information only comes from a human point of view and has not been put into practice with fish. (I don't eat maggots worms or snails by the way)
Cheers Marc

Hi all I wasn't really annoyed I couldnt post my reply the system was giving me a hard time well I guess I was a bit
Cheers Marc

The previous post I made, had a recipe using wheat and sprouted wheat in equal quantities when making up your own pellets.. These home made pellets are said to contain about 40% protein, 20% carbohydrates and 2% minerals, including vitamins A, B, C, D, F and K.. A lot of the vitamins come from the fact that your using the sprouted grains...

I have tried to feed my fish wheat before with only limited success, they tended to chew the grain for a bit and then spit it out, but perhaps if I had soaked them first they may have been more readily consumed..

Yeah there seem to be a few minor hickups now and then with logging into the group, I have had to do it a couple of times just now to get on.. Over the next month or so I will be having things looked at ..

Many of the recepies ive seen have "fish meal" as the primary ingredient.

I've done a bit of "googling" and have come to the conclusion that "fish meal" is basically all the left over bits of the fish from cannerys and the like.

Now for those of you who remember, i had a "bit" of a fish loss (20 odd) a while ago. I was sacred to put them all in the bin as it was 6 days away from being collected so i stuffed them in a bag and put them in the freezer to put out the night before..........i was rummaging throught the freezer yesterday and found a bag that i didn't recognise........Oh yes, the perch!

I know the visual on this might look YUK , but does anyone see any pitfalls in blending them up and adding them to my super-duper home made fish food that i'm going to be kicked out of the house for making ?

Either that or fertilizer for your garden.

What did the fish die from? If it was power loss or something, you wouldn't think it would hurt, but if it was a disease....

Sue

Sue,

they died from 8hrs with no oxygen being pumped into the water.

Probably wouldn't have been an issue, except there were 20 fish in about 180 litres. Very oxygen hungry environment.

I'll wait another couple of days incase someone posts a big STOP DONT DO IT reply.

steve

Joel,

Your Barra ate the pelleted food didn't they? Also, Barra should go ok with Perch shouldn't they?