Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Can anyone coment on PDCAAS(Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score) and if we can relate this to fish. If so I'm going to have to rethink what I will be putting in my home made fish food.

thanks
Jason

Perhaps you need to give us a little more background on what that means. It is a new one on me.

Hmmmm, likewise, haven't heard of that myself...

Basically human (and fish) conversion of food to protein is limited by the "limiting" amino acid of that particular food... the rest is essentially undigested and passed...

The PDCAAS... Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score... "are determined by comparing the amino acid profile of the specific food protein against a standard amino acid profile with the highest possible score being a 1.0. This score means that, after digestion of the protein, it provides per unit of protein 100 percent or more of the indispensable amino acids required."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDCAAS

A balanced diet would therefore represent a combination of foods (ala - amino acids) that have a value of 1...

Fish feeds are specifically formulated to the limiting amino acid profile, and particular fish species... and have been for donkeys years... this is one of the difficulties with attempting home made fish feed...

P.S... the PDCAAS of fish ranges from 0.87 - 0.99 .... depending on species...

So roo (or road kill), minced and dried, should have similar PDCAAs to beef which is 0.92, and be pretty good for carnivorous fish? I have a few hundred roos on my place that should keep me in fish food forever - and I can just see all the urban aquaponicists knocking off all the neighbourhood cats and dogs too............

Seriously though, what would be the problem with using minced roo meat as fish food? Perhaps not whole of diet, but as a supplement?

As a supplement... probably nothing...