Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yeah, now that Big Food started getting into organic, the system can't be trusted anymore.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/busin ... wanted=all

http://www.handpickednation.com/dr-jose ... -labeling/

I still think certified organic is way safer than not... But it's definitely losing its quality.

Now, if big food is caving in to consumer demand and apropriately grow organically, I see that as a good thing. As long as they are actually growing organically of course. Can you imagine a world where crop rotation was the method of choice by big business, no more harmful pesticides and herbacides? Soil health a priority?

We can all dream right?

I may be a skeptical old fart, but I think that's about all I see us doing.

Hi All I just joined Backyard Aquaponics,

The USDA certified organic fish food has changed from its original formula. I'll try to answer some of the points made in this discussion. We took the fish meal out because it is senseless to continue to drain the oceans of fish and a lot of people doing aquaponics are vegetarians and did not want fish meal used. We also took out the soy because it introduced estrogen into the system; when Tilapia are hatched they have not developed a gender; added estrogen will cause higher levels of female Tilapia (no offense ladies) plus a lot of people are allergic to soy.

GMO's, before there was anything called "Certified Organic" the people that wanted pure food had a saying "Know your farm, know your farmer". We are extremely diligent to know our sourcing suppliers. We are...how can I say this? Offended, disgusted, internally abused, mislead, lied to, kept in the dark etc. etc. about GMO's, the scientists that develop GMO plants do not know what damage they are doing to us. In other words...we don't like em!

Why are there so many ingredients? That is a great question and would be a very long conversation but let me assure you that every ingredient has to do with adding proper amounts of nutrition to the fish, some of the ingredients help other nutrients with absorption all throughout the digestive processes within the fish... we even add some additional nutrients that are going to help the plants and buffer the PH in your water. This formula was designed for use primarily in AP systems.

If I can help with other questions please let me know, I'm Patrick McKee. The man that developed the food Jim Helfter will be speaking at the Aquaponic Association conference 2013 in Tuscon, AZ about Genetically Modified Organisms, please attend his breakout session, you can learn a lot!

On the floating and softness of the USDA certified pellets, we reformulated to help them float. The challenge is that there has to be certain ingredients in the food that can be puffed like puffed rice. There are so many nutrients and elements in the food that help the digestive system within the fish and there are no fillers. The pellets are very nutritionally dense but not hard making them not want to float. We determined that a 50% float is enough to see that the fish are eating without compromising the nutritional value. Hope this helps, study the ingredients, find out what each one does, we promote understanding through learning.