Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding Home Made Fish Food

Fish Food, do you have a nutrient analysis for the Aquamax or did Purina disclose the % of digestible protein to you? I have contacted them before and I know how stingy they are with specific information. I'm just wondering where your data is coming from, also the digestible value for your Gamefish grow meal.

How do you know fish will utilize 20% of the starch? I'm a dog food foodie and know a little bit about nutrition for dogs but really nothing about fish. I would like to learn more, do you have a reference for this?

I think adding more protein might not make a difference to the fish. I found this article that says rainbow trout showed no growth differences when fed diets with protein contents of 41% and 56.5%. If there are no growth differences then the fish aren't utilizing all the digestible protein they are fed. The abstract says "These results indicate that the limit to which rainbow trout can metabolize protein to increase growth may have already been reached, and that any future increases in protein in commercial feeds may not affect the growth rates."

What the fish don't utilize becomes waste. So, the feed with the higher protein content will have more wasted protein. Protein waste is expensive waste. This may be why Purina chooses to use the amount of protein they do.

You can find this interesting article here: http://www.wisconsinaquaculture.com/Docs/Purina_Rainbow_trout_feed_study-Becca_Philipps-2010.pdf