Thursday, September 10, 2009

Aquaculture fish food and cost

What do you feed your fish.  I have given this alot of thought.  This depends alot on what kind of fish you have.  If you have Tilapia you can get away with not feeding them and they will still grow off of algae in the water.  You could also feed them all kinds of green waste, like grass clippings.
Most other fish are carnivores and need more protein rich food.  There are many commercial manufactures of fish food in pellet form.  My local feed barn sells some for $32 for a 50 lb. bag. Now if you consider that with fish a 2 to 1 average feed ratio is bad (2 lbs food for 1 lb fish growth) and a 1.5 to 1 is common then 50 lbs of food will get you about 25 lbs of fish.  If you are talking catfish, about $7 per lb at the store.  25 lbs of fish would cost $175.  Thats a big difference.  There are other costs of corse not just food but it still works out to less than half the price for good nutritious fish.
    Other fish foods:
Worms,  You could start a worm farm.  Worms grow fast and live on vegetable wast.  They are also good fish food.  Red worms per 100 grams  84% moisture 2% ash 11% protein 2% fat 2% other.
Crickets,  I dont know about growing crickets but they would work if you could grow them fast enough.
Crickets per 100 grams, 75% moisture 1% ash 17 % protein 6% fat 1% other.
House fly's,  This is perhaps the best, although not the most appetizing idea for feeding fish.  The house fly has good nutritional value and is very easy to breed.  Breeding like jackrabbits would be the understatement of the century when it comes to fly's. 2 fly's could become hundreds of millions of fly's within 3 weeks.  For more information see Kurt Saxons "The Fantastic Fly" article.  I have been thinking of a small version of his fly house.  Set on the side of the rearing tank it would supplement the fish feed nicely.
      I have recently heard about Black soldier fly larva as a fish food.  It is probably the best that there is.  They grow fast, eat almost everything and best of all self harvest.  Look them up for more details.  I am starting a a BSF bin ASAP.
I think that with any alternative feed some production feed should be given also to balance the vitamin intake of your fish.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Machineman. I'm in Reedley and tried attracting BSF's last year with no success. I'm curious if you had any success with your BSF harvester? I was just assuming they weren't in our area.

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