Thank you ewest and you too Bill Cody. That's a lot of good information. Its cold here in E Texas today and we may see a little snow, so I am hanging in today and with little to do, so I will ask and tell my experience with fish food for my pond. First, I have not seen Cargill Triton 4512 mentioned here as another option when it comes to feeding my cnbg fhm, and hsb. Twenty six months ago I was introduced to the 4512 by Todd Overton @ Overtons Fisheries. I have tried two other brands, 4 bags of Purina(free from my seed and feed guy) and one bag of Optimal from a friend I made here. We did a trade when he felt like he needed a smaller sized product at the time and the 1/8" Cargill fit his need. My fish did not take to the Purina and I saw a lot of it floating around with little to no interest from the fish. And that was weird because my cnbg would tear the water up when feeding on the Cargill. The Optimal, my fish took right to it and left nothing floating around, same as the Cargill feed. So, I continued some looking around and have yet to find a reason to change feed. The Triton is 45% protein with 15% fat. And based on the growth rates ewest posted here, it seems to me the Cargill feed is at or near the top percentile when growing fish. A while back, I looked to see if Cargill was using fish meal and I did not find an answer. I did find where the company was trying to get away from fish meal because it was a dwindling natural resource, but today the 4512 fish food I get still has that fish smell when the feeders go off. I am not sure if it is meal or fish oil that gives off that fishy smell. Fish meal is not listed on the bag as an ingredient. I will also speak of the prices from Overtons/Cargill. I believe the price for 50 sks (Pallet or pallets) delivered is around $43.00 per 50 lb sk, which included the transportation. My last order was two pallets and so the cost may have changed since then, it was several months back. I can also say I have used the 1/8" and the 3/16" and the 1/4" sizes. I found what I believe was a problem with the 3/16" and that was choking and killing some of my 3 to 4" sized cnbg. I saw that happen at the time I was feeding. I was losing 4 to 6 cnbg in that size range and it took me several days to figure out what was killing these sized fish. I will continue to use the Cargill from Overtons unless I can find a reason to change. And my cnbg are getting big, I caught the largest bg I have ever caught in my life the other day I think it was close to 10 to 11" and this was most likely from my original stocking 26 months ago. I still have questions about the fish meal or where the high protein, amino acid and fat content comes from?
