Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi All,

I am proud to be a new member of this site, I've been reading the posts for months. After many hours of research I am still not sure what to feed my tilapia. My goal is to produce quality, not optimize growth rate.

Is it possible to feed your tilpia a high quality dog or cat food (orijen) and mix in some dried duckweed? I know the idea of eating dog food sounds gross but the ingredients in this product seem impressive and it is supposedly fit for human consumption.

Ingredients: http://www.onlynaturalpet.com/products/ ... 77036.aspx

Is the protein too high? Is there any downside to this food?
Basically i want to know what is the best thing to feed my fish that will be consumed by humans. All help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Bill (New Jersey, USA)

Here are the orijen cat food ingredients.

http://www.onlynaturalpet.com/products/ ... 77033.aspx

Thanks again,
Bill (New Jersey, USA)

the Purina company makes a Trout Chow that I know some local Colorado people have used to feed their Tilapia. May be worth looking into.

Scott

there is a program here in hawaii where tha kids have three groups of tilapia...tha control, and two dog food groups...they are trying to see how tilapia are affected by different foods, and if tha taste of tha meat changes depending on what they eat...

my friend owns a tilapia farm, (he's hookin me up wit da tilapia ) and they are using his fish as the test groups...pretty cool stuff...

i think they started couple weeks ago, but when tha time comes, ill post tha official results...

i know that didn't answer tha original question, but thought it would be interesting...

ive gotta ask, how are the dog food eaters coming along?

I often feed my silver perch dog biscuits when I have run out of fish feed, they love it...

Here is the problem I see, especially if it is a recirculated system.
I may also see a problem,if it is used in aquaponic.
Minerals used in the dog and cat food.
Sodium 0.3%
Chloride 0.5%
Potassium 0.6%
Magnesium 0.09%
Sulphur 0.4%
Manganese 14 mg/kg
Cobalt 0.55 mg/kg
Iodine 4 mg/kg
Selenium 0.5 mg/kg
Iron 200 mg/kg
Zinc 150 mg/kg
Copper 13 mg/kg

The following minerals I consider bad for fish and aquaponic.
These may build up in an enclosed recirculating system and that may make it dangerous.
I realize that fish food may have some of these too.
Sodium 0.3% ( salt, natural preservative )
Chloride 0.5% ( for inhibit bacteria growth )
Iron 200 mg/kg ( could kill fish but may be absorbed by plant live )
Zinc 150 mg/kg ( could kill fish )
Copper 13 mg/kg ( for use in fighting fish disease, but can kill plant live( root killer) and bacteria and fish)

Regular cat and dog food has close to the same ingredient, except for all the fish.
The protein amount would be good for tilapia.
I took some dog and cat food and I put it in water, it dissolved really slow. It floated and it look like real fine milky look powder falling down or sinking when it softens . Like you would put flour in the water. I am not sure if fish could feed on it. The way it looks, more would end up in the water and filter-system and in your grow bed than in your fish mouth because of the fine misty powder looking thing coming off.

Over all I would not worry about using it as feed because all of the ingredient, but what worries me the most are the metals especially zinc and copper. Copper is used for treating fish diseases in fish tanks, but at the same time it will kill plant live like that is exposed to it, like algae - water plants and there roots. Root killer ( copper sulfate) is derived form copper/ salt.

Now sodium / salt may be a benefit for the fish, but here again it may build up and overdose fish and plant live.

I looked at the cat and dog food and I was impressed how close it was to the koi fish food.

I've read this thread a couple of times now and I still can't understand;

- why you want to use dog or cat food
- what you mean by "quality" (taste ?, texture ?, appearance ?, fillet yield ?)