Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Stimulates my appetite as well Keith....

AFAIK garlic is, at least for fishes, a purgative.

On another matter: diet tolerance is linked to many factors, fish species/ages and also water temperature are major ones. An old huge fish in a cold water can survive for weeks without food. while young tiny one in a hot water will quickly suffer.

We have a similar issue in that we stretched out our remaining feed this week and have now run out (discovered BYAP was shut this morning), and won't be able to get back there until next Friday. We have 39 silver perch about 1/2 to 3/4 plate size.

We do have some old goldfish food - does anybody know if this would be okay to use for just a week?

Otherwise it looks like dog/cat bickies and microwaved egg...

Dog food?

it's a mixture of meat and bone meal, animal fats, and cereal. The only part of it that would be of any benefit to fish as far as I'm aware is the cereal, and that would depend on whether or not your fish are vegetarian.

A week without food will not harm your fish other than to stop them growing for a week. I have left both aquarium and pond fish for up to 3 weeks with no problems, and that includes freshly spawned fry.

If you really must feed them something, try taking your scoop net to the nearest lake and catching a bunch of Gambusia or something like that. Cook them up to kill off any nasties, and "viola", fishy fish food.

Hey Ash, i would think that most fish would find goldfish food palatable as it is usually a mix of veg and fish products, but read the packaging carefully as it may contain additives which are not suitable for feeding to livestock for human consumption, IE color enhancing chemicals.

Thanks for the info megapuddle. We fed the Perch the goldfish food last week - your comment re additives didn't even occur to us!

We'll get the bulk food from Skettering next time around to avoid running out again...

hang something dead and stinky over the fish tank

Dog food has protein..... that is what is beneficial.

If Charlie is right and I'm wrong, I will stand corrected.

I based my opinion on the fact that mammal fats are not digestible by fish and are proven to be bad for their health, and as the entire content of a dog biscuit is infused with the fats I would think very little of the protein or any beneficial vitamins, minerals, etc would actually be useable by the fish.

No I dont think your wrong, dog food is by no means a good diet for your fish. There are presevatives and colouring agents that are aslo questionable. But I think to get you through till you can get some more quaculture pellets there is no real issues.

The protiens, amino acids and fibre in dog food is probably all thats useful.

Yeah my fish have survived on dog biscuits many times when I've been without feed..

How can you be without feed EB? Surely you just have to drive back to the shop and pick up a bag?

good point Arbe lol

Just grind up a hi protein [not made in China] dog or cat food. Over 40%.