producing your own fish feed?

[steven baxter]

Hi, I was wondering what type of fish feed can be produced to feed fish for an aquaponic setup. I know of algea, duckweed, worms, BSF larvae. But I would like to also know what types of fish are specific to what types of feed? For example goldfish will eat duckweed, but what fish type will not eat duckweed?

 

I am Most interested in:

Trout

Tilapia

Catfish

crawdads/ crayfish

 

Thanks.

[TCLynx]

Well, I will be interested to see the ingredients and I would want to test a sample of the recipe on my fish to see what they think of it and what the water quality does with it compared to the old stand by I've been using so I'm not likely to commit now to switching to your feed without some trial.  But that said, I am interested in more sustainable feed.

[Jonathan Kadish NYC AA Chair]

Oh nice! I like your style Carey, enterprising to say the least. And about trusting you to supply, I would just point out I don't have a ton of trust in Purina to do the right thing... I would probably be a buyer of one of your kits if it made my life easier - and the price was right ;). I bet the anti-establishment streak runs strong in Aquapons.

How is it that fish can't eat too much fat but Americans have no problem with it?

[Lonny Harper]

I'm with TC, I'd be VERY interesting in giving it a shot with the hope that it will work.

[Carey Ma]

Hi guys, thanks for responding and your support but don't get too excited yet, we are still in the feasibility study and research stage so product won't be out for another two years at least. As for my kit. Well that is in negotiation but it looks promising for next spring. I simply have too many things on my plate and hope this winter would give me time to sort things out and be more productive and helpful to our cause next year.

Cheers

[TCLynx]

Well keep up the good work because you have some great ideas that I hope get past the "feasibility study" stage.

[RW]

I'm very interested Carey. thanks

[Jeff Cummings]

Greetings!

 

Well, I raise worms now as frog, snail and catfish food.  And I discovered that if you aren't careful indoors you will also end up raising large amounts of fruit flies, small gnat flies (or black soldier flies), and white flies (those powdery small flies)...and of course their larvae of these three also!

 

I devised a way of capturing the fruit flies will bottles with narrow lids (or you could just make a small enclosure that is easily sealable when the time is right) and fruit peels (banana works best).  Fruit flies make excellent fish food.

 

Also the gnat flies or black soldier flies are easily caught (if you have swarms around your house...:)  by using a bit of wine in a similar bottle that is easy to seal...these make excellent fish food as well, though they are almost twice the size of the fruit flies.

 

Haven't devised a way to catch the white flies, but their larvae are easy to catch as they like to lay their eggs on the surface between growing plants (the egg food) and the standing water (whether or not it's part of your aquaponic system...however fish water tends to attract them)...so simply raise the water level, and lower it back down after an hour or so, and lots of tiny larval worms can be scooped up and placed in fish tank.

 

Now I am raising aquarium fish, so these techniques might be useful for fish fry for food fish.

 

Also, I noticed the only concern was some of the flies getting away when I went to seal the jars, but the only thing that scares them is my hand moving to the top of the jar, but if the opening at the top of the jar is narrow, the flies aren't quite smart enough to make it out by flying up, they usually try to fly horizontal (I read that somewhere...and it's true) at first anyways.

 

Well, hope this helps, and cheers!

 

P.S. Right now I am growing my worms indoors again after purging my house of flies completely, however, I am not currently interested in raising flies, so I am keeping the worm beds completely covered with plastic bags.

 

I highly recommend WORMS EAT MY GARBAGE (book) ... very good book.  Also, Rodale's book of composting talks a lot about worms too.

 

later,

 

jeff c

 

[TCLynx]

Jeff, you can use a corner of a plastic bag to make a fly trap bottle that they really have a terrible time trying to fly out of.

You clip the very corner off the bag so there is just a fly size hole for them to go in through and you place the corner of the bag into the bottle or jar so it's like a funnel and then tie or rubber band the bag in place around the neck of the jar or bottle.  Fly trap.  They go down in the hole cause they can smell the bait but then when they try to fly out they normally miss the hole and get stuck between the rim of the jar and the bag since they tend to always try to fly up the side of the jar and the actual hole is down in the middle.

[Jeff Cummings]

That's a good method!  Awesome.  Should I ask how you discovered that? LOL

 

 

[TCLynx]

I saw it on the internet somewhere and I think I also read it in something like the encyclopedia of country wisdom or another such book.

[George]

The black soldier flies I've seen look to be about 25 times the size of a fruit fly, maybe more.

Jeff Cummings said:

Also the gnat flies or black soldier flies are easily caught (if you have swarms around your house...:)  by using a bit of wine in a similar bottle that is easy to seal...these make excellent fish food as well, though they are almost twice the size of the fruit flies.

[George]

I'd be interested in an affordable mill. 

Carey Ma said:

 If all goes well, I hope to offer a feed production kit this year or so. It will include a pellet mill, a dehydrator, blender and formula for specific fish diets.