Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding Purina Game Fish Chow "tastier" than Aquamax?

I was just on the Purina site getting the product numbers for Aquamax 400, 500, and 600 so I can order some at the feed store and I found this quote about Purina Game Fish Chow:

"If training the fish to eat pellets is necessary, use Purina Game Fish Chow. It contains attractants to help train fish to eat a commercial diet"

and this one:
"Game Fish Chow® is a 32% protein diet formulated with a strong attractant for increased palatability"

Has anyone noticed a difference in in fish preferences between GFC and Aquamax?

I will put my two cents in on this one. IMHO since I have used both products with my CC and CNBG, the best bang for the buck is the Aquamax. My reason is this simple the fish I have liked both products, in short.

If you look at the ingredients you will find there is a difference in the two products. Aquamax has a higher concentration of Fish meal(higher on the ingredient list) and that, as best I understand, converts to higher fish weight per oz. of feed a particular fish eats.

I think is the Game Fish Chow, although a good product and I would use it if I did not use Aquamax,uses the fish attractant to entice the fish to eat it better than most more common fish feed. Nothing wrong with that and helps some on the residual bio load in one's pond compared to most everyday fish feed that may not be eaten quite as well.

All that said, I would say any fish feed is better than none within reason. Generally,I understand CC process grain based fish feed better than CNBG and some other species of fish and therefore the Game Fish may be the product for you. If Big CNBG happens to be a goal then I would recommend the AQUAMAX.

One other item I read that really sold me on the Aquamax is fish life cycle. As an example the CNBG, IN general, may live past a four year life span and most here know they will, but the first 4 years or so are kinda the best and fastest years for growth as best I read. So again, in my mind and IMHO you get the best opportunity, all water and weather conditions about the same year over year, and the best utilization of feed and fish growth the fist four years or so with the CNBG. CC are somewhat different and live longer. I can attest that CC as well grow very well on AQUAMAX.

If you are growing other species than what I am working with the fish may be better and faster growing on something else IMHO.

Bob Lusk, most likely, has the best knowledge of the feed and would throw in on this subject if you told him the type of fish you are raising. He helped me.

You can search the archives on fish feed and find a lot of info,if you have the time.

Several of our non novice advisers on PB may give us more enlightenment on this subject as well.

Good luck and let us know how it goes for you.

I've also used both. In my forage pond, the small BG swim by the AQMAX to get to the GFC.

Dave:

With the different sized pellets available in GFC, is it that they want a smaller pellet or just the taste?

I have noticed the same thing with the Aquamax. I had to mix it with some 36% catfish feed just to get my small bluegill to eat it. They swam around the aquamax until the other was gone. This went on for months, until I quit buying it.

-HH

Is the difference between the two fat content?

The Purina website makes it seem like they add an attractant to the GFC for "increased palatability." It seems from some of the responses that it is more palatable.

My dog really liked Aquamax. It makes her fat too.

Our dog eats spilled Aquamax too.

Oh gawed our dog will knock you into the water trying to get the floaters along the shore if your not paying attention. We use a local company's feed call Martins.

Why I ask is they offer two different types of the same feed for the same feed the only difference is the fat content is higher in one and not the other.

Cheers Don.

Scott, it doesn't seem like the sizes make a difference. The smaller guys just seem to prefer the GFC. If I throw out only AMAX, they eat it but not as well.

From what I have read and as a novice PB'er, the ingredient list of Game Fish Chow is different from Aquamax in a couple of "What is important to some" in that GFC is a grain/plant based feed and Aquamax is a "Menhaden" fish meal based product. Most pond fish the two above feeds were designed for convert more fish pounds per oz. eaten with a fish meal based as compared to grain based products. CC are a somewhat more tolerant of the grain based feed as far as conversion of feed to pounds of fish produced.

There is a size difference in pellets with the Game Fish Chow that will help feeding different size fish, but that is why Aquamax has 400,500,600,etc. sizes.

Bio load is another consideration,if one cares about that feed issue.

Of course the more one reads and studies feed there is even a political issue in the Fish meal(specifically Menhaden)world because we feed fish in the US and some parts of the world the Menhaden is a major food source for humans. Therefore politics and big swings in fish meal prices,bla,bla,bla.

The real choice in my mind is not even the brand of feed, but what your goal is.

Some studies, and I would think logic as well, would say fish grow faster with fish meal than grain soy based feed. But the political world and others want more feed coming from plant based products, for different reasons.

I am just a dumb redneck from East Tx. and I would still say that even at a higher price, the fish meal based feed products(higher % on the bag ingredient label) are better for growing bigger fish, faster.

All that said, I would still say, if you want more and or bigger fish, that some of almost any kind of feed the fish will eat is better than none. If you want the fastest growth and max growth of game fish then IMHO there is not a better feed than the Purina Aquamax feeds for management of fish.

Sorry for the long rant,I have read too much.

Ok - lots here in prior threads. It starts with an understanding of the fish species and then the goal. Not all species need high protein or fish based protein. We had a topic on this at the PB convention.

There is a lot of study and extermination on the subject of plant based proteins as a substitute for fish meal. Still early in the process. I will copy and paste some from my talk on Fish nutrition.

I use both GFC and AM. The fish like both. I do think both have the same attractant IIRC. GFC does have some fish meal.

The study of the flow and transformation of energy within a particular system.

Bio-Energetics

Bioenergetics is the subject of a field of biochemistry that concerns energy flow and transformation through living systems.

Growth, development and metabolism are some of the central phenomena in the study of biological organisms. The role of energy is fundamental to such biological processes. The ability to harness energy from a variety of metabolic pathways is a property of all living organisms. Life is dependent on energy transformations; living organisms survive because of exchange of energy within and without.

Living organisms obtain energy from organic and inorganic materials. For example, lithotrophs can oxidize minerals . In photosynthesis, autotrophs can produce ATP using light energy. Heterotrophs must consume organic compounds. These are mostly carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. The amount of energy actually obtained by the organism is lower than the amount present in the food; there are losses in digestion, metabolism, and thermogenesis.

Basic Food Components – Nutrition

The immense variety of cultured finfish species hampers efforts to simplify production industry wide. Approximately 170 taxa are currently cultured, including carnivores, herbivores, planktivores, and omnivores, each posing its own set of nutritional demands .

Fish meal has proven to be an excellent dietary protein source for finfish, leading to its description as an ‘‘ideal protein.’’ The ideal protein concept is based on the premise that if the amino acid profile of the feed mimics the whole-body amino acid profile of the animal being fed, protein utilization and growth should be maximized

Lipids, fatty acids, and their derivatives play a role in virtually every physiological process that occurs and for this reason dietary lipid composition and content represent a massive sector of overall nutrition. Nowhere is this more true than in finfish nutrition where lipid can exceed protein in the body composition of finfish, a testament to the physiological and energetic importance of this nutrient class (Tocher2003). Aside from physiological importance, lipids are indispensable energy sources, especially for finfish, which are not well-adapted to carbohydrate utilization.

Dietary protein and energy must be kept in proper balance because a deficiency or excess of dietary energy can reduce growth rates. Fish fed diets deficient in energy will metabolize more expensive dietary protein to meet energy requirements. Excess dietary energy can decrease protein intake and suppress growth.

finfish do not require carbohydrates in their diet, … complex carbohydrates cannot be digested and utilized efficiently by most finfish species. A general dichotomy exists in the carbohydrate digestive ability of warmwater omnivores and herbivores versus the inability of coolwater and coldwater carnivores, which lack the appropriate function necessary for digestion of carbohydrates.

 For this reason, diets fed to these fish rarely contain more than 20% complex carbohydrate

Conversely, warmwater omnivores or herbivores (e.g., channel catfish, tilapia, common carp, and white sturgeon) adapt well to diets containing as much as 40% dietary carbohydrate .

Although vitamins and minerals are required in minute amounts compared with protein, lipid, and so forth, they are critically important, … Every micronutrient has a deficiency disease associated with it, the effects of which are sometimes irreversible or fatal. For a few vitamins and most minerals, excess can be equally detrimental, resulting in toxicity.

Supplemental Feeding

FOOD HABITS OF WHITE AMUR, LARGEMOUTH BASS,BLUEGILL, AND
REDEAR SUNFISH RECEIVING SUPPLEMENTAL FEED
Ronald H. Kilgen
27th Southeast Association of Game and Fish Commissioners


Largemouth bass preferred fish and other animals (64%), but also ate some supplemental feed (32%). Bluegill stomachs contained more supplemental feed
(44%) than any other item, followed by insects and animal parts (28%), and plant
parts (17%). Redears seemed to prefer insect larvae (42%), but also ate plant
material (38%). White amur apparently did not compete with the sunfishes for
either natural or supplementary food items.


Although carnivorous fish species generally have a limited ability to use carbohydrates for energy, hybrid striped bass are relatively adept at it.  Digestibility coefficients for the carbohydrates were generally high (83.3 to100 percent), indicating that both simple carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates were digested efficiently by these hybrids.


Key Science Points

Because fish growth often is limited by food availability, supplemental feeding is a logical tool to improve the condition of fish in small impoundments as the energy cost for bluegill to feed on pellets is small relative to the high caloric intake, which can be 4-5 times greater than those fed natural foods (Schalles and Wissing 1976).


Substantial increases in the standing stock of bluegill in ponds that receive pellet feed have been recorded (Schmittou 1969) and, in lakes, pellet feeding has been found to increase the number of large bluegills (Nail and Powell 1975).


These results indicate that total fish production and production of bluegill were each increased approximately 75 to 80% by supplemental feeding in 19 months after stocking (Schmittou 1967)


Previous studies demonstrated that feed in excess of 10 pounds per acre per day in bluegill ponds was not utilized. Some accumulated and decomposed, thus depleting the supply of dissolved oxygen which resulted in fish kills (Schmittou 1967) .


the rate of growth of sunfish can be increased by short-circuiting the food cycle, thereby producing harvestable size sunfish in a shorter period of time than would occur under natural conditions (Carnes 1966).


The pellet size should be approximately 20-30% of the size of the fish species mouth gape. Feeding too small a pellet results in inefficient feeding because more energy is used in finding and eating more pellets. Conversely, pellets that are too large will depress feeding and, in the extreme, cause choking. Select the largest sized feed the fish will actively eat.

Addition of supplemental pelleted feed did not contribute to the rate of growth of young shad, but did increase the growth and spawning frequency of adults.

Hey Mr. Djstuder, Just what Ewest said is a lot of what I read and in my red neck decipher! I knew one of our real pros would get us closer to where we need to be. Thanks Ewest for your explanation. Feed is a very interesting subject and complex as you have stated and is in flux as well as you stated.
I am glad that some of the fish feed companies are studying and trying different feed compositions. I believe we PB'ers will benefit even more in the future,if politics do not get in the way to much.

I tried Aquamax and found the fish already conditioned to Game Fish Chow were slow to adjust to the new food. Very slow. I switched back. No doubt the Aquamax will fatten them up if they eat it but I have some 1 1/2 lb. BG in a 4 year old pond on Game Fish Chow.

Hey Jim,

How much time did you give them to adjust to the Aquamax?

Just curious as I had to use a different feed for about 10 days until the AquaMax arrived. By the 3rd or 4th day (feeding twice per day) they were taking to the new feed but it was a very slow start.

And there was no transition back to AM, they went right after it!

I'm not saying one is better for you (or your fish) than the other, just passing on my experience.