Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

In the "Member Systems" forum, GotFish discovered that his Yellow Perch will eat the yolk of a fried egg. He intends to see if they will eat scrambled eggs. This is a great thing since YP are not known for eating pellets.

The question is; is there a downside to feeding the fishies with an egg based home made food? Would there be things that would have to be added to it to make it a balanced feed?

I recall reading something about raising discus fry on egg yolk smeared on terra cotta pots. Normally, discus fry eat the secretions off their parent's skin. If you are raising them independent of the parents, you need to replace this. I think the method is to boil the egg, smear it on the terra cotta, let it dry, and then put it in the tank. Otherwise, it just floats away and the fry can't find it.

I would think egg would be a pretty healthy food overall.

Guess one would have to add more protien for most fish.enc

Duckweed is very high in protein. 30-45% , depending on nutrients in the water. Add that to the egg.

"Hey kids, come get your duckweed omlet."

"Aww, Dad! Did you at least put mealworms in it this time?"

Problem with egg is that it is high in fat. If I ever get my arse into gear and try a home made pellet, I'll definitely be using it as 1 ingredient though (whould mind everything together well. THe added advantage of using egg is that they can be home grown from chooks foraging on weeds and other home grown plants.

I used to keep Discus as a hobby and I made a beefheart mixture and froze it. Then I would just break off a chunk to feed to the fish. The recipe was something like beefheart, spinach, beef liver, egg, spirulina. Make sure all the connective tissue was removed and then blend into a paste and freeze. I also was aware of a food that had the texture of scrambled eggs that was also frozen. The makers would never even hint at what it was but it looked like scrambled eggs with spirulina mixed in. Word was that the fish went crazy over it.

I have chickens running in the yard and they produce more eggs than we can consume. This would be great if eggs were on the preferred menu for YPs.

I used egg yolks for feeding my juvenile kokopu. They loved it but are little savages and tore into it which polluted things quickly. End result though was stringy sticky lengths of bio-film that I manually removed.

Fish live mainly off fats and protein so high fat shouldn't be too much of a problem providing the protein content is sufficient as well.

Just getting the egg in a less degradeable state, and I'd say excellent supplementary fish food.

Preferred fat content of diet will depend on the fish you are growing. In the case of silver and jade perch, fat content is lower than many fish, perhaps because they are omnivores?

janet, are you comparing eggs for eggs? LOL

40% protein content for duckwwed is dry weight, was the protein content quoted for eggs also dry weight?

dont know its posted on the link (enc) above steve.
Don't look that high in fat VB, seems about the same as protien content give or take. Now cholestoral leval thats a different story.

Good or bad cholesterol, there seems to be a bit of backtracking on eggs from various nutritionists of late.

I used a LOT of eggs when I was a trainer (3 dozen plus a week) and I was in fantastic shape. I also used a lot of citrus though. My cholesterol is fine, and was fine.

Either way I cant emagine most of are fish will live for the 20 or so years it may take to clog up an artery. LOL

don't even open that can of worms

One way to incorporate duckweed and egg (and anything else with egg for that matter) might be to cook it up as an omelette.......the same as you might put lots of fresh parsely in an omelette.

I'd overcook it so that the egg holds its form better.....and only add the mix to the pan in small quantities to form a thin layer......then coarsely chop it with a knife.....when it has cooled.

This approach would also allow the inclusion of other ingredients like fine minced meat (ground beef) or rubbish fish (like European Carp).....or fodder ingredients like soybean meal or lucerne meal.

Gary

I'd have to put something gross in it or the fish would never see it.