A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

Food for Channel Catfish

I have started a system with goldfish and plan to add catfish fingerlings. I was wondering what people are feeding their catfish and where to get it. I was hoping for an organic source but that seems like it might be difficult. Any suggestions appreciated.

Steve

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Permalink Reply by TCLynx on April 5, 2011 at 8:44pm

Organic fish food is not highly available and what there is might not be all that appropriate to catfish though you could try it and see what your results are like. I believe the organic food is a koi food so that would be where to search.

As to what I've been feeding. Aquamax 4000 dense culture feed. Aquamax is a Purina Mills product. To find a local source for it, go to the Purina Mills web site and do a search for a Purina dealer near you (but ignore Tractor Supply as they won't order it for you.) Anyway, find a feed store on the list and give em a call. Ask if they can get a bag of your desired fish feed put on their next purina order and find out how much it will cost and what sort of order and delivery schedule they have. The feed store I get mine from puts in their orders on Monday mornings and the Purina delivery usually happens on Thursday afternoon. You do not want them to stock fish food for you as a standard since fish food has a short shelf life so you want to get it ordered fresh rather than having a bag sitting at the feed store since last year when you last got it. The feed comes in a 50 lb bag so it will last a while unless you have a really big system. The Aquamax 4000 works for catfish as well as tilapia (though they might like a slightly smaller pellet which I think might be aquamax 3000) And I expect the same would work for Bluegill and goldfish will probably happily eat it too.

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Permalink Reply by Larry Reinhardt on August 13, 2011 at 1:55pm

I'm pretty sure that in the old days Purina called this food 'Caged Catfish' for dense culture was on the bags. I used between 100 and 200 bags a month(seasonal) on my Koi farm I fed this to all fish 5" and up. I raised catfish and tilapia right along with the Koi, I used 'Tropical fry starter' and 'Tropical fish Chow' to grow all my fish to 5" size.