Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations No more Aquamax for me!

Here is the dilemma then in my mind. You have one feeder and you have three types of fish you want to feed. You have feed trained large mouth bass blue gill and you have hybrid striped bass. Can someone please tell me what to put in the feeder? Here is the other delimma getting the fish to eat the food you throw out. I think this may be the problem I am having. Baby doesn't want to eat her carrots.

James, My HSB went into my pond yesterday. Stocking low numbers so not to interfere with my plans to grow double digit CBLMB. As you can see, I am new to growing out fish. Pond is one yr old. In my discussion with Todd @ Overtons, I understood the HSB may not feed @ the 3 feeders I have out and most likely will feed on the TFS in the pond. There may be some feeding that takes place but as I understood it, the HSB will most likely feed on the other fish in the pond. So with that in mind, everything I have learned says low RW/WR means low forage in the size needed to feed that desired fish. As I said I am new to growing fish but learning something most everyday.

Tracy

James have you looked at your carrying capacity vs fish numbers/lbs ? You may have to many fish to support.

One way to get extra food to your HSB, with little wasted fish energy, is to hand feed LMB pellets (big feed size) at the same time the feeder goes off. Here is a link to a vid of that.




http://s74.photobucket.com/user/ewestmnw/media/HSBfeeding6-2013IMG_0167_zpsec3b2730.mp4.html

I had to order out another pallet of Cargill's Trident 4512 fish food yesterday and so for the first time I ordered out some of the 1/4" along with my normal order of the 1/8". My thinking was the CNBG (original stock) are now in the 7" or larger size and now adding 7" HSB I thought it would work better. Less energy returns more growth was my thinking. Am I wrong here? Maybe I should have asked before I placed the order. ha

Tracy

FWIW I feed Cargill Sportsman Choice Multi-species pellets. Feed has multiple sizes of pellets in the same bag and is pretty middle of the road with respect to nutrition (36% protein). I mix in a little Skreeting 46% 3.5mm pellets for my little guys.

TGW1 you are correct. Here is some info on how it works. You want to get as much energy into the fish with food as you can with as little effort expended as possible.

From a prior thread http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=127798&page=1


The concept of 'bioenergetic' is not hard to understand. The sun is the basic source of energy for the pond plus anything you add (extra forage fish or pellets). Here is a good site with basic info.

http://www.aqualex.org/elearning/fish_feeding/english/bioenergetics/intro_biogen.html


"The flow of energy through a biological system and the system's inherent energy requirements are covered by the term 'bioenergetic'. In biology energy is required to maintain life, grow and reproduce. From a fish farming point of view, growth is the main area of interest. The main energy source for consumers (as opposed to producers such as plankton and plants) is their diet or food. This provides the energy to drive chemical processes giving rise to new tissues, to help in osmoregulation, to aid digestion (the means by which consumers unlock energy stored in food) and so forth. [Note: energy cannot be made or destroyed but can only be converted from one form to another].

Energy taken in by fish through digestion of food is used ultimately in one of three ways - that is for growth, metabolic processes and that lost to the fish through waste. During digestion the main components of the diet (protein, fat, carbohydrate) are broken down into carbon dioxide and water with heat as a by-product, the latter being rapidly dissipated to the surrounding water. The energy liberated is temporarily stored in special 'energy compounds', the main one being adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which become cellular level energy sources for functions such as protein manufacture (i.e muscle growth), swimming and so on."

The same concepts apply to the pond as a whole ( plants like plankton or pondweed and animals like zooplankton , bugs and all others).

A key fisheries science concept that is key to understanding the working of the entire system. Energy in = energy used + growth. Read then comment.


Welcome to the world of fish physics. Many of us understand basic fish behavior and can reach logical conclusions about where the best place to throw a fishing line is. But when we don’t think much further than that we are missing out on some very interesting details of fish behavior. We can never fully understand why we find some fish in one location and some fish in other locations until we consider the concept of fish bioenergetics. Ultimately, fish behavior is a product of bioenergetics, ... this concept to demonstrate how interrelated physics is with fish behavior. First, ... take a look at basic fish bioenergetics, understanding the underlying quantitative principles. Then, ... look at some examples of how physical forces, thermodynamics, and light characteristics are specifically related to fish bioenergetics.

BASIC FISH BIOENERGETICS
Fish bioenergetics includes components of physical forces, thermodynamics, and light characteristics, and follows energy laws and theories describing any other closed system. What it all boils down to is the net rate of energy intake. If this rate is positive a fish will grow and if it is negative then a fish will begin to undergo the stresses of losing biomass.

Fish bioenergetics is really a matter of efficiency. Potential profit for a fish at any given position ... (is) ... the amount of energy coming into its system as prey minus the cost of staying at that position.

Bioenergetics
the biological study of energy transformation.
Bioenergetics is the subject of a field of biochemistry that concerns energy flow through living systems. This is an active area of biological research that includes the study of thousands of different cellular processes such as cellular respiration and the many other metabolic processes that can lead to production and utilization of energy in forms such as ATP molecules. All biological processes including the chemical reactions of bioenergetics obey the law of thermodynamics.



Thermodynamics

First Law is the conservation of energy: energy can neither be created nor destroyed.
Second Law states that the degree of disorder or entropy (S) of a closed system or of the universe as a whole can only increase.[1


Overview
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.

In a living organism chemical bonds are broken and made as part of the exchange and transformation of energy. The chemical bonds in carbohydrates, including sugars, are important for the storage of energy. Other chemical bonds that are important for metabolism include the terminal phosphate bonds of ATP and the energy-rich bonds of fats and oils. These molecules, along with oxygen, are important energy sources for many biological processes. Utilization of chemical energy from such molecules powers biological processes in every biological organism. Bioenergetics is the part of biochemistry concerned with the energy involved in making and breaking of chemical bonds in the molecules found in biological organisms.

Food molecules are sources of chemical energy for many organisms. Not all metabolizable energy is available for the production of ATP.[2]

ewest, that was a mouth full. Thank you for supporting my decision to increase the size of the feed. I hope the fish like the idea

Tracy

Welcome to PondBoss. Bioenergetics, physics, the laws of thermodynamics.....and you just wanted to feed your fish. Simple, huh?

Optimal Forage Theory, explored by a hill jack:

"Hollis, you've got a choice. One plate has a lovely, wedge shaped slice of cantaloupe. The other has the same sized slice, but I've cut it into bite-sized chunks....which one do you choose?"

Hollis: " Give me the full slice. Only have to bend my elbow one time thataway".

Bioenergetics, front porch style.

Love this forum!
Cmm

Here is what one of the aquaculture guys that raises bass told me. They were having a problem with fish gaining weight on the fish food they had been feeding for over 20 years the skreeting 42%. Formula had changed with added feather meal. They then switched to the 48% skreeting and the fish began to gain weight as before. The 48% still has fishmeal as the number one ingredient. These are large mouth bass and not hybrid striped bass and so just like eric is saying a totally different type of fish but if the hybrids won't eat the lower percentage food it doesn't matter does it? I hear what your saying eric on the density issue also. We have taken out every catfish caught this year and every crappie under ten inches. I have burned out two electric knives cleaning crappie. We have removed every bass under ten inches. I added 100 pounds of tilapia 100 pounds of bluegill and two hundred pounds of koi. I have also added 100 pounds of crawfish.

this was an example earlier this year that looks fat but now they are much skinnier

Beautiful fish man!

Length, weight?

Beauty right there!

Cmm

thank you bill. The hybrid striped bass is truly a beautiful fish. Its funny seeing the picture just before the spillway pipe gave out and lowered the pond about twelve feet. Here is what it looks like now after fixing the pipe and raising the water level about two feet. So whats the bottom line on the fish food? Im like tracy should we just increase the pellet size or switch to another brand? I can't seem to find the aquamax lmb and my dealer can't get it. Is the aquamax still the best?

I just noticed this. Why did you add the Koi? I have never seen this in a stocking plan before and I am curious.

cheapest bait in our area. We call it bass candy can't overpopulate but reproduce quickly

shiners are 10 dollars a pound where we live

Thanks James. Very interesting. Cheapest bait fish I can get here is FHM and they are also 10 bucks a pound.

James, I know that fish was a blast on the fly. I am hoping that someday soon I will have a similar picture taken at my place.
And after looking a that fish, I will bet you will figure out what to feed again to get them back to that level. Do you have TFS? And I am still thinking lack of proper forage, but again, I am new to growing 10 lb HSB or LMB. But I bet I get there
Good luck on the problem solving

Tracy

I had a cold winter last year and the thread fin I don't think made it. WE still have lots of gizzard shad. I may try to get some thread fin next year from the lake near me. Im going to have to get better at throwing a cast net.

FYI HSB will do fine on high protein food. It is not required but will not hurt. What is important is the total feed profile sources of protein , carbs and lipids + micro-nutrients etc. They need to be close to matching the fishes natural diet.

I will be glad to send someone my power point presentation on Fish nutrition if they will somehow post it here. I guess the individual slides could be made into a slide show and posted. That is beyond my computer pay grade however.

Eric, if you could upload it to YouTube, then that can be imported here easily.

Never done that .

I started hand throwing Skretting 9.5mm 48% protein fish food this week. This might work for those who have been feeding Aquamax 600, and are looking for a replacement. IIRC, it's an 1/8" larger than AM 600, so feeder considerations may come into play.

How are your fish responding to the larger 48% protein Skitterling pellets??.