Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yesterday morning my trout were not at all interested in the fish pellets I threw in to them, and I was more than a little bit concerned about the state of their health. I wondered if their lack of appetite was temperature related but the temperature was little different to the day before. I noticed a lot of moths floating on the surface of my quite large tank and I realised that I hadn't switched off the bug zapper around midnight, as I have done each night since installing it a week or so ago.
The moths gradually disappeared over the course of the day, along with the floating pellets that had initially been ignored. Last night I ran the bug zapper for just a few hours and was greatly relieved this morning to discover my trout were once more hungry for pellets.
I can deduce from this that trout will gorge themselves on insects all night, if the insects are there to eat and you let them do it, reducing their desire (need) for other food. They can perhaps then be given a supplementary feed of processed fish food during the day, as required. I admit my original intention was for the insects to be the dietary supplement, not the staple.
I am wondering just how complete a food are these moths, although I am aware that Aboriginal tribes in some regions used them (Bogong moths, from memory) as a valuable source of protein, but only on a seasonal basis. Are there any known issues concerning a fish's diet largely comprising just one insect type, such as moths? For that matter, my question could be extended to food sources across other classes of life such as worms, slaters, fly larvae, etc. Is variety in diet less important for fish than it is for higher forms of life?
I calculated the power cost to be less than 10c per night for the bug zapper so, if a diet of moths is adequate, there is definite potential to reduce the food bill.

Yea trout will hit anything that spikes interest that hits the water.

Its great if you can save yourself a buck using other things along with pellet feed by using worms, BSF, maggots, duckweed, moths etc etc

But - you can feed them all the bugs in the world but the reality is that the pellet feed is produced using all the protien and trace elements required to grow your fish to their maximum potential whilst providing all the goods required for optimal plant growth.

Feed variety is nothing new, I feed my SP worms, prawn, yabbies and bugs during the winter because they are off the floating pellets but there is no substitute for the real deal for weight gain in the summer months.

Variety for the female fish is OK, but for the males just meat potatoes and beer

Thanks Charlie. Do I take it, then, that I should be looking at feeding more of the various natural supplements to my rainbow trout and reducing the amount of pelletised feed I give them at this time of the year, or does that rule of thumb apply more to silver perch than trout?

Good point, John. I clearly haven't considered potential palate difference by gender! Perhaps I should toss the hens a light salad.
Did you know that female trout have picked up on the tendencies of some of their human counterparts?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2002/05/17 ... 20517.html

Yea, sorry PJL I should have been more descriptive, this was only in reference to my SP, which are a warmer water species. Mine dont feed on pellet during the winter months so I substitute with worms, grubs, snails, prawn and yabbie meat etc, this helps them put on a bit of winter fat from the proteins as they are less active when the temps are down. This in turn gives me a headstart with them when summer arrives.....which is when I switch back to the pellet feed.

Trout on the other hand I only feed pellets for their lifetime. Out of interest I tried feeding them some prawn and yabbie meat but they dont seem interested.....and the SP smash it before they get much of a chance anyway.

Thanks for the clarification, Charlie. Your strategy sounds good and i will use it when I have a dedicated SP FT set up. I will keep my trout on a diet of Skrettings trout pellets by day and moths by night, since that seems to be working for now.
Interesting that you have your trout and SP in the same body of water, which is contrary to the strong (strip tearing) advice I was blasted with in my introductory thread. Maybe my SP haven't been eaten by the rainbows, after all?

Check out Charlie's thread mate. He has put in a divider to keep them separated.

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I have just searched through the forum for references to millipedes but it seems inconclusive whether or not they are acceptable tucker for rainbow trout and/or silver perch. I have them crawling all over the outside of my tank and have happily help a few over the side and into the black abyss, however, due to the darkness of the water I can't see if they get eaten by the fish. Any ideas, pro or con?

Fish dont seem to eat millipedes from what I have found. I have heaps of them here at the moment and they must drop into the tanks as I find dead ones at the bottom of the tanks all the time. Even the birds dont bother eating them!

That's good enough for me, Troutman. I had noticed that they have a very salty smell, a bit like slaters and pillbugs which fish appear to happily devour, so was inclined to think they would be ok. However, I certainly don't want or need a layer of decomposing millipedes on the floor of my tank.
Thanks.

I have just finished carving up a big 'roo. I divided it up, as I normally do, into joints and cuts for the family, offcuts and bones for the mutts, small scraps for the ginger moggy and the rest into a big bucket for the poultry. This got me thinking about whether or not my Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) would be interested in small slivers of this high quality lean meat.
I could just throw in a few bits as a test but unless I actually witness the meat's consumption then I don't know if it has fallen, uneaten, all the way to the floor of the tank. That would not be good for obvious reasons.
Another option would be to tie a piece of kangaroo meat on a string or fishing line and feel for bites.
Still another option is to float the idea here on the forum and request some feedback.
I noticed on another thread that, in answer to someone's question re what others feed their trout, BNDYBEAR answered 'Kangaroos!'. I suspect, however, that his answer was given tongue in cheek because the inquiry came from a Californian.

So, do trout eat strips of red meat?

I've heard before it usually isn't a good idea to put red meat in since it can harbor E. Coli and other baddies that can hurt humans (don't want it getting on your vegetables).

use the roo meat to farm maggots then feed them to your fish

I eat the same kangaroo meat that I would be feeding the trout so I don't think the E.coli risk would be any greater if the food came to me circuitously, via fish and plants, rather than directly. I may be wrong.
I have had a go at collecting maggots from chook heads, kangaroo skins, etc contained in an onion bag and suspended over a bucket. It has been hit and miss, at best, and most smelly and unattractive. I have been meaning to look into how to make a biopod in order to streamline the collection of the larvae produced and to tidy up the whole process.