White rice feeding

[mitten]

Your initial worry was that a few fish weren't eating. Using rice you got them to eat, which is, I guess, a good thing. Now you read that rice is not a good koi food. It would be reasonable to use it to introduce other, better foods though. Go ahead and throw in some rice, less, mixed with sweet potato, or orange, or shrimps, or sinking pellets. Koi eating the rice should go ahead and eat the other stuff, too.

Are your fish inside in Illinois?

Mickey the windowman

[pskorf]

now i have 20 lbs. of it too.yes the koi are inside actually year round.i am crazy and built an indoor 10,000 gallon pond coming up on a year ago(still need to finish the decorating maybe tomorrow some more.
i need to find a good sinking pellet also need to find a good food period.

[Clay]

Dick, interesting comments. I have read that some breeder do feed rice. I haven't myself and when the breeders feed it is was a suppliment and not their total diet by any means, but it was a part of what they feed.

One comment on feeding koi and that is what the breeders feed in a mud pond as a supplement to their daily forage is quite a bit different as per requirements of the koi that we keep in liner or concrete closed systems.

In this case, I am a true believer that what the breeders feed their fish in a mud pond is NOT the best for us to feed in a closed system. I also think that they have different requirements trying to raise literally thousands of fish vs most of us with a doz or two fish.

Paul, Chris Neaves has posted some very good info on this board. I would search out and read some of his recent posts.

[dick benbow]

Clay, I think if you check with what we call our mainline breeders, you will find that none of them feed rice. Not even occassionally. I think as in everything in life some things in moderation are fine. But I just worry that thinking white rice with all the nutrients removed would not be a good steady diet.

[Clay]

Quote: Originally Posted by dick benbow But I just worry that thinking white rice with all the nutrients removed would not be a good steady diet.

Totally agree Dick.

Rick

[bekko]

I had read something about feeding rice too so I steamed some rice with minced african tree snails and chopped seaweed, hoping that the rice gluten would stick it all together into a glob. Well, it didn't stick together at all - back to the drawing board. Rather than throw it away, I fed the mix to the koi anyway. The koi immediately picked out all the snail meat and seaweed but the rice was still sitting there on the bottom the next day. Maybe it's an acquired taste.

-stevehopk in

[ranskye]

this is funny as i have a bowl of cooked rice in my feed freezer box and i just leave it sit there. i guess i was just bein lazy, i will use it up one day.
i sometimes give them watermelon and lettuce. ill feed them just about anything if someone gives it to me. if they eat it im ok with it but ususally its pellets day in day out.

i have been feeding my breeder koi a silver perch diet for years. a four or six mill pellet.
i think it was 35 percent protein but i belive that last time we bought feed the feed place had upped the protein level to 45 plus percent to make some of the silver perch farmers happy and sell to the barramundi farmers also under the same production run. so now it seems they no longer make the lower protein food.
i ran out and started feeding them a bag of horse pellets, i got it free of a guy that runs a horse feed company, it would cost me 17 bucks a bag by the bag from the shops and i buy the other stuff by the tonne to get it at 35 odd dollars australian per bag. the horse feed was 17 percent protein.

now i bought some proper koi feed but it is like 50 bucks plus a 25 kilo bag and i was paying 36 for the silver perch diet.
i think i have read before that high protein is bad and even 35% protein is considered to be high but my fish were ok.
i mihgt consider feeding more horse pellet in the winter but i do notice my koi roe up over my winter and are ready for spring breeding so im not sure yet.
can anyone comment on if it would be a bad idea to keep feeding them 45 percent protein? it is not fish meal based just farm crops and i think lamb or meat meals. i do know that when it was 35 percent protein it was comong form crops and meat meals also and i never had any problems with them for yearsm then i read once that lamb and meat meal is not good for them but i see no problems??

[ranskye]

i should mention that they are in a mud bottomed pond but crowded to about 50 koi breeders to a net pen about 6 metres by 8 metres, they can sift the bottom but i imagine it wouldnt be much that each fish gets.

[MikeM]

I will assume you are serious and not posting in jest. I am glad your koi are doing well for you. The diet you are feeding is quite a bit off from optimal. I think it would be an easy consensus that it is a very poor diet, but a testament to the adaptability of carp and their hardiness.

Protein should be above 28% or the fish will have to eat too much of the carbs/filers to get the protein needed. Protein in a 32%-38% range is good. The protein can come from plant or animal sources. For the most efficient digestion, protein from seafood/aquatic sources is preferable. Plant-based protein from algae and wheatgerm are preferable to other plant sources. Corn is less digestable. Mammalian protein is not very easily digested at all.

The needs of any fish are quite different from the needs of horses. You should stick with foods intended for fish, and better are foods intended for koi. Yes, these foods are more expensive; but there are reasonably priced ones. In my area the best food available at low prices is the Azoo brand out of Taiwan. The ROC government policy promoting exports makes it notable less than equivalent formula foods, but you have to careful regarding storage of the huge bags.

I'd suggest you alter your approach to feeding altogether.

[Clay]

I mentioned this a while back on this board, but when I attended a wet lab last year and we necropsied some fish, the organs were covered with a thick layer of fat. The Vet, Dr. Myron Kebus, commented on how bad the organs looked and he asked what the owner was feeding the fish. Before he answered I guessed a trout chow of some type or a catfish chow.

To feed a koi something that is not koi food as far as a pellet is almost always a mistake as far as your fish's health goes. Breeders have the luxery of taking a cull and opening the fish up and see the results of their food selection. I even thought of keeping some flock spawn fish to raise and so that I had a sacraficial fish to slice and dice and see what kind of results I am acheiving as far as food selection on koi health.

As mentioned many times, koi will eat a variety of items and some fresh greens or fruit can be benifical, but all things in moderation. A balanced koi specific food pellet is what would be recomended for 80 - 90% of their daily diet and if you wish to suppliment with other items - cool.

I don't cook for the family often, but use to cook for the koi. Here is a paste recipe that I modified from a chap in the UK named Bil (with one L) Wight.

Paste Recipe

1 Sweet red pepper
3 # shrimp (tails, shell, & not deveined)
1 # Snow Crab Legs (ground up shells in blender)
1 # Scallops
1 # Squid
13 # of cooking water / fish after everything was cooked
5 cups of orange juice
20 cups of 50 mesh Kelp powder
20 @ 500mg capsules Bee Propolis
1 cup Brewer’s Yeast

The above after it was all mixed and put into plastic freezer bags weighted approximately 25 #. I have packaged into 1 # portions.

The crab legs were boiled and all of the water was kept. We cut the crab shells into 1 – 2 inch pieces and put them in the food processor with some of the water. They came out great – very fine particles went into the paste great.

After it comes out of the freezer I will add:

1 tsp of cod liver oil
½ tsp of wheat germ oil
Two tbsp of bentonite clay
2 tbsp wheat germ

I had very good success with the above but still feed pellets and used the above as a treat which the koi attacked with vigor. Now, I am lazy and don't cook for the fish but still choose to feed two or three pellets mixed in ratio depending on water temps. There are many good koi specific pellets on the market, but I think that on this board most would prefer not to mention names of products.

I always wish that Chris Neaves would share specific names of koi food and his independant test results of sending samples of those feeds out to labs. The real problem that we have is that there is very little required as package labeling. Protein can be derived from feather meal or beaks and add to the protein content. Fish oil percentage isn't listed etc, etc. As consumer's we need better labeling and less marketing but I don't see that happening in the real world.

Sorry the response is so long, I can get carried away when it comes to koi food.

Rick