Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding Fish food recommenation?

In order to get the same amount of healthy fish flesh, more low quality feed is necessary.

This may not necessarily be true. In part it depends on the how effectively the wastes can be utilized by fish. Depending on the fish, some of waste can be consumed and result in gain. TP are fairly efficient converters of their poop. But BG aren't going to doing a lot of poop eating. Whether poop is a stable organic (will persist as a very slowly
decaying organic material in pond soils CN ratio less than 8 ) depends largely on the amount carbon in the residue. High protein feed are already stable in terms of CN ratio and will not decay as fast a feeds that have CN ratios > 8. In fact, what you may consider low protein feed is supplemented with additional carbon (think sugar or starch) in order to reduce ammonia and facilitate the recycling of waste nutrients into the food chain. The additional carbon isn't added to the feed ... it is added to the whole pond and this makes additional food for the fish.

That means more fish poop. To what extent the fish poo from low quality feed differs from high quality is an interesting question.

Ask yourself "Why would the carbon, nitrogen, calcium, sulfur, and phosphorus be any different in one feed than another?" All that is different of each of these nutrients is their proportions in the poop. The elements themselves are identical.

The impression I've gotten from Purina & Optimal is that their high protein feeds cause fewer excess fertility issues, not more. Any research on this?

To what extent is your impression influenced by opinions and sales jargon published here? Researchers don't make brand comparisons. They look at nutrients and judge things without considering brands. None of the brands publish ingredients so you can have no confidence even the next bag is identical to the last. In the end, its protein %, phosphorous %. There is not much else affecting N and P in wastes.