Save when you buy koi food or fish food Check your koi fish food label fish pond
Do NOT waste money. Understand the specification on koi food and fish food packets and you will save considerable amounts of money and grow bigger koi fish more quickly. Do not believe everything you are told about koi food it might not be true. Check for yourself easily.
If a 5 kg bag of koi food contains 15% ash, 10% moisture and 3% fibre then 28% of the bags contents (amounting to a whopping 1.4 kg) is a total waste of money.
It is almost certain that you do not know how much money you spend annually on koi food or fish food for your pond fish. If you did you would be surprised. You will now be even more surprised when you see how much of the money you are spending is being wasted on so called koi fish food. Most fish food contains a very high proportion of useless content.
Buying the right koi food for the right reasons will save you lots. It may well be that the expensive fish food you thought you could not afford turns out to be your best bet and will save you money on your koi fish food bill. You will see other significant benefits also.
Consider the following:
Considerable expense is incurred by most enthusiasts in attempting to get the best out of their koi and one of the most expensive and ongoing cost items is the cost of koi food.
To emphasise this consider that if a fish eats 1% of its weight every day and if there are 50 kg of fish in a pond then the owner will feed 0.5 kg of koi food every day. This amounts to 182 kg/year. At between R40 and R50 per kg the koi food bill can work out to more than R8,000 per year. Even a small keeper can incur costs of R500 per year on koi food quite easily.
The fish quality as measured by rate of growth, absolute size, and colour are determined to a large extent by what and how much the fish eats. Most koi keepers will agree with this I think.
In simple terms high quality koi food made from high quality raw materials fed in the correct quantities results in less fish waste products and less waste from the koi food itself.
The lower the waste the better the filter works and the better the water quality and the better/happier the fish must be. It is as basic as that.
You can equate this to the difference between high quality dried dog foods and ordinary dried dog food.
Feed your dog the higher quality (also higher priced) food and you will notice far far less waste in the garden to clean up and you will also notice your dog needs to be fed a much smaller quantity.
The reason is that the dog digests a higher proportion of the food fed and less waste passes through the stomach.
ALWAYS, ALWAYS look at the analysis of the koi food you buy. The ash, fibre and moisture percentages are worth absolutely nothing. So the higher these percentages the more the money is being wasted.
If a 5 kg bag of food contains 15% ash, 10% moisture and 3% fibre then 28% of the bags contents (amounting to a whopping 1.4 kg) is a total waste of money.
This means that the R200 you paid for the 5 kg bag actually resulted in your paying R144 for food (3.6 kg) and R56 for rubbish (1.4 kg).
Worse still 18% of the food (ash and fibre pass through the fish) now has to be handled/removed by the filter - 900 gms of solid waste has to be removed from the pond.
This is why in ponds without bottom drains you see a lot of faeces appearing on the bottom of the pond in a short space of time.
Digestibility of Koi Food
As fas as koi food is concerned the digestibility is governed by the type of raw material used. If you use high grade raw materials in formulating koi foods then you get high protein and low ash.
If low grade raw materials are used then the ash content will be high. Think about it!
Where does the ash come from?
It comes from low grade raw materials such as scales and bone which are routine ingredients of normal fish meal.
The quickest determinant as to whether a koi food is of potentially high quality is its ash content.
High ash content is BAD news for a koi keeper.
Herring or whole fish meal is probably the very best raw material used in formulating koi food because it contains almost everything a fish needs. Whole fish-meal and white fish-meal are not the same.
White fish-meal is the ground-up mixture of whatever parts of the fish that have been left over after processing such as filleting of the complete fish.
Such fish meal is very variable because of this reason and it will always contain a high proportion of ash which comes from the scales and bones of the fish - today it may contain a large % of scale or bone, tomorrow it may be a totally different make-up.
On the other hand herring meal or whole fish meal is what it says - it is derived from crushing the whole fish and not just the low grade left overs so the proportion of bone and scale is very much lower.
Look for whole fish meal if you want high digestibility and high growth.
When people say that ash is important in a food they are talking about minute quantities of important trace elements. In practice most of the trace element requirements come from the inorganic salts contained in water rather than from the food source.
It is common sense that if 100% of a koi food organic content is digestible then most koi will be able to digest up to 100% of the koi food fed to them leaving nil % to come out the back end and be captured by the filter.
Because there is fibre in the organics 100% is not achievable.
In practice the koi keeper is looking for as high a digestibility factor as possible and it should always be verifiable by a detailed review of the raw material composition. The practical implications of high digestibility are very important when deciding how much a food really costs.
Lets go back to the koi food example above which had 15% ash, 10% moisture and 3% fibre. Of the 3.6 kgs organics or food in the bag the really useful food is that amount that can be digested.
What good is it if the organics remaining are not highly digestible? Lets say 90% of the organics are digestible then the 3.6 kg of food we thought we had bought reduces to 3.24 kg. The indigestible organics must then come out of the back end of the fish again and pollute the water and increase the load on the filter.
In this situation the R200 paid out actually bought 3.24 kg of useful food not 5 kg. The real cost per kg of food able to be consumed and digested by the koi was not R40 per kg but R61.72.
The moral of this story is think and look before you buy. Look at the information provided would you buy food for yourself if there was no label showing what was inside?
This article was written for South African conditions and thus contains costs in Rands. Substitute your own currency the impact is the same. Your fish food is costing you a small fortune.
If koi stop feeding there are a number of possible reasons.
Download FREE Koi Food Calculator
You can download my free koi food calculator to use to work out what you can save by using these ideas above. It is a fully functional Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
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Tetra Koi and Pond Food Products |
Tetra invented the floating pond and koi food sticks
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Tetra Pond Fish & KOI Foods
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TetraPond Floating Food Sticks
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TetraPond Floating KOI Sticks
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TetraPond Growth Food for KOI
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TetraPond Goldfish Flakes
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Hikari Premium Koi and Pond Food Products |
Hikari Premium KOI Foods
HIKARI fish food is by far the most popular brand in Japan, a nation known for its fine ornamental fish. Try HIKARI, you will soon see for yourself that it brings out the color in your fish, and makes them stronger, healthier and more vibrant too. HIKARI never clouds the water your fish live in. Consider the following diffferent types
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Staple KOI Food
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Wheat GermColor Enhancer for winter conditions
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Color Enhancer
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Wardley Food Pellets Food for Pond Fish |
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WARDLEY POND TEN PELLETS FLOATING FOOD PELLETS
Nutritionally balanced, formulated for all pond fish. This highly digestible formula is specifically designed to meet the energy needs of koi and goldfish.
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WARDLEY POND TEN STIX FLOATING FOOD STIX
Highly digestible and eagerly accepted balanced food formula. Light in weight and heavy in nutrition, supplying the energy needs of goldfish and koi.
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WARDLEY POND TOTAL KOI VIBRANT COLOR FLOATING FORMULA
Fortified with a wide variety of ingredients including calanoid copepods and tagetes extract which enhance natural reds, oranges, and yellows. Resealable poly bags to ensure freshness.
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WARDLEY POND TOTAL KOI GROWTH PROMOTING FLOATING FORMULA
Enhanced protein and amino acid profile to provide the extra nutrition required by rapidly growing young koi. Delivered in 3 size pellets designed for easy consumption by fish of any size. Resealable poly bags to ensure freshness.
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WARDLEY POND TOTAL KOI WHEAT GERM FLOATING FORMULA
Highly digestible, excellent cool weather diet. Formulated to deliver the correct protein, nutrient and vitamin content to the fish in the cooler weather when there appetite and energy requirements are reduced. Resealable poly bags to ensure freshness.
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POND FOOD FLAKES
A highly nutritious food for goldfish and koi in outdoor ponds. Fortified with small whole shrimp. An excellent supplement food containing a stabilized form of Vitamin C.
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