Quote:
Originally Posted by Arthur
WARNING: I sell the stuff. With this cleared,
I can truely comment on Dainichi koi food since I have used it almost exclusively for over six years.
Dainichi is a relatively small producer. The food is always FRESH. At times when you order you have to wait until they can make some more.
To my knowledge, Dainichi is the only US-made koi food imported in Japan and used by some breeders and some very well known hobbyists there.
Two years ago they started mixing a small amount of Monmorillonite clay in the food. Since then I have never seen floating feces in my pond and shiroji has improved.
The main filler is wheat meal, not wheat flour. Fish feces are large and consistent and easily settled out.
They fame to claim is the two stage manufacturing process where minerals and vitamins are coated onto the cooled pellets after th extrusion stage. This can be a drawback with slow eating fish as the coating dissolves in the water after a few minutes. However, even my largest koi eat this food agressively, so this is not a problem for me.
The All-Season food is their "wheat germ". My eyes were opnened to this fact when I asked why they did not produce a Wheat-Germ pellet; I was walked down the ingredients list comparing it to Hikari Wheat-Germ: it is almost the same except that Dainichi uses white fish meal and Hikari uses brown fish meal. I use All-Season as I prefer the lower oil content when feeding at lower temperatures. It is also available in sinking pellets.
Growth Plus is a high protein mix with added kril and shrimp. IMHO it is well suited for koi under five years of age. Baby pellets (~1mm) are available; they float for about a minute then very slowly sink. Great for tosai.
Premium is a summer food for older fish (5+) that is a little lower in protein and contains a very small amount of Spirulina.
Note that I have used several other koi foods: Nozomi, Hikari, Hai Feng, Japan Pet Drugs (MediCarp and others), among others.
These are my observations about the food, not the manufacturer's, in fact they might disagree with a couple of points I made.
Sorry for the long post but several people on this board have asked that a provide more detailed reasons for my liking this food.