Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I am beginning to make my own tilapia food and am not sure if I need to get the food to float in order for the fish to eat it. I've been doing this for about two weeks now and the fish seem to be hungry for whatever mix I throw in for them. The water is a little cloudy.

Most of the homemade food sink to the bottom. Is it being eaten?

That is the challenge of sinking food, it is hard to tell if it is getting eaten or rotting on the bottom.

Young tilapia will eat where ever they can find food, they have an incredible protein hunger and they will even eat their smaller brothers and sisters when young. Adult tilapia are less aggressive about feeding and I definitely prefer floating food for the adults since overfeeding will definitely hurt the water quality.

That's good to know. How then, does one get the food to float?

I'm not sure since I buy floating feed.

rpondpa, how is your feed made, if you don't mind my asking, I recently purchased a pellet mill and plan on mfg my own feed for tilapia also as well as for the rabbits and poultry. I was just planning on using dried lawn clippings blended up for protein with rice bran and possibly roasted ground soybeans or acorns, all of which I can get either free or extremely cheap. It should look like typical rabbit pellets when done. I haven't tried it yet but I did get me some good reciepes from the net.

So far, and I'm just starting with this, I've tried several combinations of foods and methods.

I've done it as simply as tossing leftover rice or corn into the water. The tilapia go for anything I toss in but much sinks to the bottom.

I've also tried chopping up leftovers, mixing them with egg and cooking them like scrambled eggs. Same result. The fish seem to like it but can't eat it all before it sinks.

I've purchased a food dehydrator and tried drying vegetables, bananas, bread, etc. These don't seem to float better than anything else.

Basically, the fish like everything but only dried toast seems to float. It would be nice to know what makes the commercial pellets float.

Wheat?? , Rice bran ..... wheat bran , Take a look at what go's into bread/whole meal bread etc ,, that floats for quite some time.

Thanks Chappo, I'm glad to know I'm thinking in the right direction. I heard you mention Morianga also. Did you just pic the leaves or branches and toss them in?

Leaves ,, grow tree's VERY close together CUT the tops off at about 3 foot tall , they will branch like crazy and produce heaps of leaves, you get used to strip-harvesting ,, thumb for-finger near thick end of branch and pull with pressure ,, leaves come off , branch stay's there to re-grow.
If feeding to cattle or pigs ,, place for 8-10 hours in a warm SHADED place before feeding ,, concentrates the vitamins.

To keep them floating, you could try infusing air bubbles in them somehow.

Maybe add yeast and sugar or something... then allow to rise and then dry the stuff??

I don't think adding baking or cooking soda is a nice thing - all that sodium!

The difference in "sinking" or "floating" commercial pellets.. is simply the method by which they're made... with some differences in composition, particularly oils..

A "sinking" pellet is made by binding the pellet mix through steam, heat, and compression... the pellet mix is essentially "cooked"... somewhat like a cake...

A "floating" pellet is made by forcing the pellet mix, in a dough, ... through an extrusion die... small particules of water are trapped and upon drying these spaces become filled with air that allows the pellet to float.

During extrusion the starch in the feed mixture is fully cooked, a process known as gelatinisation, where the starch granules form into a strong gel that once dried forms a very strong structure which keeps the feed bound together..

I suppose if one wanted to make a home made floating feed (this would only work on a very small scale as I'm sure it would be way too tedious for more than a small batch) one could mix up the dough and then feed it through a meat grinder (perhaps with the blade removed but the die in place) I've heard of making home made spaghetti this way. Then I suppose you would let it dry or toast it. I'm not sure if it would be easier to break up the strands into pellets before or after drying.

Perhaps if you added some flax seed meal to the mix the fish would get healthier blends of omega 3 fatty acids.

We had three tilapia in an aquarium for several months and they were always eating off the bottom. We feed floating pellets but they went along the bottom and picked at whatever was there. The bigger challenge as already mentioned is just knowing what they are and aren't eating.

I have been feeding my tilapia silver perch pellet's and filaments algae, was surprised they eat the algae when they have pellet feed but it is good that it lasts in the tank for a while