I was told the perch I purchased today were shipped from out of state to my supplier in SW Michigan. I didn't buy many, around 100, just enough to get started and see how they acclimate to my pond. Apparently they were 'trained' on Aquamax pellets.
I don't intend to feed daily as my goal isn't trophy perch. I'd rather see how the pond can sustain them naturally. I've spent about 18 months trying to build a variety of forage and I'm curious to see how the balance of life is in my pond before interfering too much. I'm afraid my crayfish might get ahead of themselves without some hungry fish in there to take care of them.
I also know that there are lots of snails, hopefully the perch will go for those too.
The perch looked great, all looked quite lively and all made it the one hour ride back home with no mortalities as of tonight. The larger perch, maybe roughly 1/3 were full of eggs and I was told if i wanted young perch to hurry up and put some branches in the pond as they may even lay eggs as soon as today.
So I asked the nice people at the fish farm what they fed their perch. I asked if I could buy some from them. I figured I'd try to keep them trained by doing some hand feeding from time to time when I had a chance. Mostly to keep them pellet trained and perhaps if they learned to come to the same place around the same time, my kids could learn to do it and watch them eat every day after school.
I was told that although it was 'very expensive' this was the best floating pellet to use. I was kind of surprised at the label but accepted it, said thank you very much for being kind to honor my tiny little order and taking care of a new customer.
This is what they told me to find and use in the future:
It is part of my job to be up on the difference between Vitamin D2 and D3. D2 is made by plants and animals as a result of sun (UV) action on them. For example trout caught from the wild are a reasonable source of Vit D2, I'm told farm raised trout are not. D2 you purchase in the store is made by taking big trays of fungus and exposing them to UV radiation.
D3 is made by UV action on the skin of humans. Most over the counter supplements, even if they do not specify, are D3. This is simply reverse engineering of the D3 molecule in a lab and then packaged into a capsule or tablet for human consumption. Far better to get it this way then to expose trays of humans to radiation.
I found it interesting that this bag of fish chow also includes added HUMAN vitamin D.
Perhaps the reasoning is simply to try to achieve the same levels of D3 in large fish farms of the trout to keep them 'on par' with their free range cousins.
