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. Always go for high digestibility koi food
As far as koi food is concerned the type of raw material used governs the digestibility. If you use high-grade raw materials in formulating fish 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 that are routine ingredients of normal fishmeal.
The quickest determinant as to whether a food is of potentially high quality is its ash content. High ash content is BAD news for a koi keeper. Herring or whole fishmeal is probably the best raw material used in formulating koi foods because it contains almost everything a fish needs. Whole fishmeal and white fishmeal are not the same.
White fishmeal 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 fishmeal is variable because of this reason and it will always contain a high proportion of ash that 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 fishmeal is what it says - it is derived from crushing the whole fish and not just the low-grade leftovers so the proportion of bone and scale is much lower. Look for whole fishmeal 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 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 important when deciding how much a food really costs.
Lets go back to the koi food example above that 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?
continued back to first fish food section
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