Last year I hand fed our club pond each evening and morning. I noted that while some of the food was taken on top, it seemed that the fish were eating it after it started to sink. The only thing I saw eating it was BG and GSF. The food was Nutri Source Farm Pond food I bought at Tractor Supply.

I see this Game Fish Chow from Purina. It says different size pellets. I don't want the large pellets going to waste or getting eaten by bullheads, which is all we have as far as catfish.

Advise?

It's been said on here before to feed fish pellets that are roughly the size of their eyes. GFC has a vairety of pellet sizes in it, the largest being roughly 1/4". AquaMax grower 500 has basically the same pellet size that you are feeding now.

http://aquamax.purinamills.com/aquamaxproductlist.pdf

Of the feeds I have used GFC seems to float a little longer before sinking.

Actually, if I buy 500 pounds of Aqua the price is about the same as the Nutri, within 2 cents a pound.

What are their contents ?

Aquamax grower 500 is listed as 41% protein. Nutri is listed as 36%.

I was only going to feed our 1/4 acre pond 3 pounds a day. 1-1/2 morning, 1-1/2 evening.

When I was hand feeding I'd toss it put near the diffuser and let it drive it back. The fish ate it better then.

Don't it have to be a certain kind of protein to add real weight to fish. I remember reading here somewhere.

This is where I got the good dope on Purina Aquamax.

That is a lot of feed per day for a 1/4 acre pond. Is that how much you fed last year?

Is it? How much is reasonable? Last year was about 1.5-2 pounds, usually once in the evening and split between two locations. If a single feeder will do it that would be fine. Will the left over feed be good until the next year?


I suppose I could set two feeders to toss 1/2 pound each morning and evening

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthread...5520#Post155520

I started this thread to get a forum average. Time to give it a nudge.

So, going by that, would 180 pounds acre/month be too much to calculate? That would be for me (1.5x4)30/4=45 pounds a month actual. I wanted to split it and use two feeders doing that amount, but by what I read 360 pounds acre/month is way high.

Seems high to me.. I don't feed though.. I bought a feeder and will start feeding this spring. I was planning on feeding a bag a month through 1 feeder I have a 3.5 acre pond..

There's really no set amount of food to feed. Let the fish tell you how much they want. They should eat it all within 15 to 20 minutes every feeding period. If there is still more floating after that, all you are doing is adding to the nutrient load of the pond and will have an algae/weed problem down the road.

For BG , LMB , HSB , trout , YP the source of protein is key. It should IMO be fish based (fish meal , fish oil). For catfish , tilapia and grazers then plant sources are ok (soy , grain ).

Here's the thing that is different than what I'm told. I toss the feed in and there is some feeding at the surface, GSF kill it. But I watch and as the feed sinks below the water, Then the BG's start hitting it. They actually seem to wait under it until it starts to sink. weird huh?

From what I've heard/read that's kinda common.. My question is how are you suppose to know what's getting ate in 15 minutes if it's all sunk? Sorry to but in on your topic..

Yeah, I know. I did go through a spell that I fed heavier, found these two brown blobs, just to, I figure was the fat from the feed, but I don't know.


I feed about 1.5 ponds a day. I can't see it actually causing a problem in a pond that is aggressively aerated.


Let me expand that. Generally it's the larger gills doing that. The smaller ones hit it as soon as it is near what ever cover they are in. Like under some chara.

The Nutri-source feed you buy must sink more quickly than other brands. You might want to try a bag of AM 500 or Game Fish Chow to get a good idea of how much they are eating in the 15 min time window. The AM 600 seems to sink faster than the other 2.

My feed trained bass also seem to hit the sinking 600 pellets more readily than ones that are still floating. It must be a comfort zone thing.

AM 500 is what I have the price on. I don't figure on training bass and I don't want to feed the bullheads. Just the BG's. We have some GSF, big dang things at the end of the year, real eating size.

I recently talked to Lusk about this. He now recommends only fish oil based feeds like Aquamax for bluegill and other predators.

For catfish, plant based 32% is plenty.

Looking through the Nutrisource web sight It seems to indicat a mostly plant base. The only animal products listed are a protein from feathers and hair. That and maybe some fat with the source not listed.

It seems like the protein components are from a chicken processing plants scrap pile.

I bet when I start feeding the Aquamax 500 they go nuts over it.

My experience with AquaMax is that it floats much longer than 20 or 30 minutes. I am sure some of it sinks, but even an hour or an hour and a half later some is still floating.

Bing

So if I find it has drifted to the shore and is there say in the middle of the day I should reduce the timer on the feeder?


I was looking at this Moultrie directional feeder kit. I was wondering how much feed it throws per second.

Exactly!



Unless the feeder was designed specifically for fish feeding, then it most likely was designed for feeding wildlife, and that usually means whole corn. I found that while Aquamax 500 fed thru those types of feeders consistently, when I switched to AM600 those wildlife type feeders struggled with the larger pellet size, resulting in a lot of clogs. The amount of feed that is thrown per second is dependant on pellet size. The mfg. should be able to tell you what their baseline pellet size was when the feeder was designed and how much it threw per second.

Although this is not a directional feeder it serves my purpose. I use aquamax 600 and it has never clogged on me.

http://www.sportsmansguide.com/net/cb/moultrie-6-1-2-gal-econo-plus-feeder.aspx?a=552646

The directional is listed under their fish feeders. I would think that with Aquamax 500 being small it would work fine. I sent them an E-Mail inquiring.

Thanks Bing..

I bought the Moultrie Feedcaster. Unfortunately it wont be running until spring so i got no info for ya

Put a big trash bag over it and fire it up in the garage!

That's a good idea.. I do need to run a couple test runs..

Let us know how much a second

I'm moving the pond into my garage tonight aswell..

Hair and feathers are not digestible. Although, they are protein. I wouldn't feed that stuff.

You are what you eat. I don't want hair and feathers on my fish!

Well, it's not actual hair and feathers, it's an amino acid extracted from those sources. There is also fat, no mention of the source. I would think that fat would act like an attractant and its source important. If it is say chicken fat than one would think it less attractive than fish based fats and oils, which are natural to the fishes environment.

But just speculating.

I thought I would copy and paste this from Doc Griffin from this thread on fish feeds. http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=117414&fpart=1


Typical BG food




Catfish feed






MEG

Feather meal as a fish food protein source. There are two primary factors of protein quality for monogastrics (fish for this discussion) - 1) Amino Acid profile and 2) Amino Acid availability. The amino acid profile of feather looks pretty good if you look at the Total Sulfur Amino Acid content. It has a high content of cystine - a sulfur amino acid (SAA). SAAs can be limiting in monogastric diets and tend to be expensive to formulate into diets (they are relatively low in many inexpensive plant proteins). Unfortunately, the reason it is so high is because feather is a structural protein. The di-sulfide bonds between two cysteines make the protein very tough. This is what gives the keratins their structural rigidity - like our hair and fingernails. Unfortunately, this serves to make them very hard to digest. Therefore, as a rule, the availability is not so good. To increase the availability, feather meal is often hydrolyzed, this is an attempot to break down the disulfide bonds to increase availability. Shoe leather analyzes at 85% crude protein, but it is not digestible.

A word on protein sources.... Most protein sources are available in different qualities. This is particularly true for the expensive animal proteins - fish meal, poultry meals, blood meals, etc. Quality and freshness of the raw materials and the processing are factors that result in this variability. As examples:
A) Quality of Raw Materials: Meat meals are often priced on protein content - simply put, it is the ratio of bone (ash) to meat (protein). Bones (minerals, ash) are not as valuable as protein.
B) Freshness of Raw Materials: The US commercial fishing fleet for menhaden now has all refrigerated vessel storage.... the season is in over the summer, primarily in the Gulf of Mexico. Obviously, if it is not refrigerated....
c) Processing: Blood has a good amino acid profile. If it is drum-dried (essentially scorched on a extremely hot steel drum) it has poor availability and is a fairly poor ingredient. If it has been spray dried under low heat - it is an excellent ingredient.

High quality fish meal is the gold standard - it has the best Amino acid profile for fish (fish protein to grow fish protein)and is highly digestible. Further, it tastes great to fish (fish meal based diets are much more palatable to carnivorous fish) and it contains about 10% fish oil (high in omega 3 polyunsaturated fatty acids). Many other proteins can be used as long as they are formulated properly into an overall dietary amino acid profile.

Holler if you have questions. MEG

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ewest

Doc G can you give us some guidance on lipids (in pellets and or forage fish) as a necessary part of what carnivorous warm water fish (BG, LMB and HSB) need for winter survival ? Do most of them come from the fish meal (or fish oil in live forage) or elsewhere ?

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MEG


Well, today I see that Yahoo has a story on the importance of omega 3 fatty acids for us humans. For most of us, the source is fish - salmon, tuna, sardines, etc. I have not seen the data - but, for winter survival, the idea is that fish oil is a fluid. This enhance membrane fluidity. This is often cited as a reason for the role of PUFAs with brain function/development. When the water gets cold, the fish get cold. Therefore, it stands to reason that these fats benefit the animals in cold conditions. If the overall fatty acid profile has too much saturated fat, their fat reserves will solidify in cold water - like tallow in cold water. These PUFAs are important in many other aspects besides the physical properties....

Predatory fish get these fats from the smaller fish they consume. They do not synthesize the long chain PUFAs. The source is from algae and these fats are passed on to algae-eating zooplankton and fish and move up the food chain. Menhaden are excellent sources of the omega 3 PUFAs, because they are fatty fish and about 25% of their fatty acids are the long chain PUFAs. So, in a prepared diet, you need either a significant amount of certain marine algaes, or fish oil or meal (approximately 10% of fish meal is fish oil - as a side note... this is because fish meal is mechanically expressed, so it does not get all the fat out. In solvent-extracted meals - such as soybean meal - there is vurtually no fat left).

I understand that but I have to question the percentage of available protein in that food. From what I read, the Aquamax 500 is far superior for predatory fish than just about anything else on the market. The feed I gave last year was more of a general feed and not targeted at a specific class of fish. The Aquamax 500 is targeted for optimum results at a specific class of fish, predators.

Protein from feathers and hair, while protein, is not digestible!

armednfree and others for better understanding of the above post I made - AM is a Purina product. Doc Griffin (Mark Griffin PhD , MEG above) was the head nutritionist for Purina (fish foods). One of the products he created was AM Largemouth (it is based on RT [chemical mimic] as a top nutrition source for LMB). He has a few posts here which you should read – very good info on fish foods.

Here's my issue:




How successful is that attempt? D they really care how successful it was?


I'm looking at what I was feeding. It looks like dog food with just a few more feathers tossed in.

I would suggest not worrying to much on the fillers (feathers etc)and focus on the fish meal/oil as the fats/lipids/protein source for BG, LMB , HSB , YP etc.. I like Purina products and trust Mark to give good info. AM also includes feathers just as most do but the key is top quality fish meal/oil. There is a fish food links thread in the archives to many producers to compare. Have read and digested (no pun intended) quite a few studies on fish food/nutrition.

The problem with "off brand" feeds is finding out just what the protein is composed of. There is a feed mill about 60 miles North of me that sells very high protein fish food at a ridiculously low price. I called Mark about it and asked questions. Although he was very careful to say nothing negative about a competitor, he did tell me that his ingredient cost was higher than their retail price. That raised a red flag for me and I chose to stick with Purina.