Save lots of money know how to choose the right koi fish food
Avoid any fish food high in ash and moisture ... this is just a waste of money. Look for high quality protein in the food
You may want to skip this section if you use only small quantities of food for feeding a few goldfish.
I have written this chapter because it is an area where so much money is spent by koi keepers in particular and it an area that can create many problems particularly when it comes to water quality. I have tried to be objective and in the end the consumer always decides anyway.
The keeping of koi is a hobby enjoyed by many people worldwide. Everybody strives to get the best from their ponds, filters and of course their fish.
Most enthusiasts incur considerable expense in attempting to get the best out of their koi and one of the most expensive and ongoing cost items is the cost of 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 food every day. This amounts to 182 kg/year. At between R40 and R50 per kg the food bill can work out to more than R8,000 per year. Even a small keeper can incur costs of R500 per year quite easily.
Given these facts it is important to share the secrets to minimising food costs and simultaneously maximising the benefit to the fish and the water quality overall.
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.
The water quality is a direct function of the food fed to the fish and this fact is rarely discussed and little understood. In simple terms high quality food made from high quality raw materials fed in the correct quantities results in less fish waste products and less waste from the 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 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.
This article is not meant to be a treatise on koi nutrition and the best reference I can give to anyone wanting to understand this complex subject more is to start with the excellent publication KOI NUTRITION IN SOUTH AFRICA published by SAKKS. The article is intended only to allow yourselves to better understand how to get the best value for money when you buy a food so you can avoid some potential pitfalls.
ALWAYS, look at the analysis of the 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) are 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. In comparison when you buy a 5 kg bag of FOCUS Koi Food you are buying 4.375 kg food and 625 gm of rubbish with only 395 gm of solid having to be removed by the filter. This is why all koi keepers who use FOCUS Koi Food know that using Focus improves the water quality - they see the bottom of the pond is much cleaner and the water discharged from the filter contains less muck.
This web page is an extract from Tony Roocroft's "The Complete Pond Solver" ... you can read more about it at http://www.really-useful-books.com ... when you buy the book you get 12 Excel pond calculators free as well as "Water Lilies and Pond Aquatics" ebook also free
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