Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I too need to add my frustration about the organic pellets I got for the silvers. They didn't touch them for ages and only started eating them when nothing else was available. Growth has been negligible, admittedly they only started really eating them in Autumn but water temps where at 20-25ish at that time, come winter they pretty much stopped completely. With temps slowly rising again, didn't touch the stuff at all. Still had some bara pellets left (not much mind you) so put in a teaspoon, water at 15 deg and they ate the lot! My trout were the same, only ate very small amounts and growth was not as fast as I would have liked. Gave them a tablespoon of the bara pellets and they went crazy straight away! F&F gave me some 6mm pellets and commented on the lack of size of the trout compared to his, which were bought at pretty much the same time. ANyway suffice to say, I am no longer using the organic and have got a bag of 4mm barra feed from Ballarat. Trout love them! Silvers going to be feed the remainder of my 2mm and hopefully will be big enough to start on the 4mm by end of Oct into Nov.

I am keeping most of the feed I have left for yabbies when I get them and the rest of the organic is going to a mate of mine who is using them to supplement his dam stock. He isn't worried if they don't eat much as there is plenty of natural feed in the dam already.

As much as I love the philosophy behind the organic feed, hence the entire system is organic, in my limited experience, it has been nowhere near as good as other feed

Quachy

You need to compare apples with apples Quachy... to attribute poor growth in your trout to the "organic" feed... isn't really fair...

It was made as a Silver Perch feed... 35% protein... whereas Barra and trout feed are more like 45%...

fair call rupert, but the same could be said regarding growth for the silvers. not to mention they hardly touched the stuff and I was constantly having to clean the bottom of the tank of uneaten food. I am pretty sure I didn't overfeed as I was weighing my feed, if anything I was slightly under feeding the silvers.

I am not saying that the feed isn't any good, but these are just my experiences (as I said limited) and I have heard of other people using this feed with greater success. Maybe I had a bad batch?

The feed won't be wasted though as yabbies seem to love them and when I get my yabbie tanks in order (in conjunction with the big system/small system upgrade) then I will be feeding them this.

Cheers
Quachy

Good idea recycling it with the yabbies...

My Silvers didn't blink an eye when I ran out of my feed and switched to the "organic"...

The one thing I did notice... was that it was quite "dusty"... and "murked" the water....

This was probably due to it's age... and the fact that it breaksdown much quicker then other feeds... as it doesn't contain any preservative agents..

Would probably be best kept in the fridge...

Sounds like your batch was contaiminated... perhaps by rodents...

DOn't know to be honest. I kept them in a number of sealed containers which were washed and dried before using. Who knows. I don't want to give up totally yet on the organic, but won't be getting another batch until more positive reports come in.

Quachy

Could just be decomposing anyway Quachy.. no preservatives...

Check out jims system he had the same problem and the cost as well

I just ordered fish food from Grobest as their food is LAP...which is important to some not much to others....They also have a talapia feed which is plant based protein and cheaper to buy......But the Rep said that most of the growers are going back to their SE4 as they get a better growth so price vs growth your choice...

Hey? Tilapia feed in QLD? Didn't think there would be much demand for that.

We've found that in AP quality of feed is very important for your plant growth. Saves having to add lots of other stuff to try and deal with deficiencies.

What brand do you use Joel - still Ridleys?

it is a shame this never kicked off

smaller 500g , 1,3,5 kg bags would have helped more AP users get involved with it
(as main issue seems to have been long term storage )


price was about right for me to buy a 20kg bag a month @ $30 shipping AU wide without having to buy a pallet and try and sell off half of it

some how I must have missed this product only found it because I was looking for cheaper feed because its getting hell expensive and I no longer have access to 1ton meat meal