Hello, and thanks!

[David - WI]

I wonder how the fish decide what the smallest piece they will eat is?

The Purina site says, "Match the feed size to the size of the fish. If the fish vary in size, use Purina Game Fish Chow with multi-sized particles. The floating ration allows for monitoring of the amount of feed consumed. Feed only as much as fish will eat in 10 - 15 minutes." so they know you can't just dump the small feed in a pond and have good results.

Now I have to rethink my choice of dies for making pellets, because I don't want to make pellets that are too small for the largest fish. Although the dies are cheap enough to have several.

[foodchain]

IF the previous posts regarding fish food size are accurate...why not feed flake instead of pellet?

[foodchain]

Utilize an extruder or pelletizing machine. These are hands down the two cheapest ways to go. IF you are looking for round pellets so they roll better, use the pelletizing machine. IF you are looking for long narrow pellets use the extruder.

[David - WI]

IF the previous posts regarding fish food size are accurate...why not feed flake instead of pellet?

I don't know... if big fish won't eat small pellets; why would they eat flakes? Plus, my automatic feeder fillers won't work with flakes.

[foodchain]

I didn't mean that seriously. Pellets are a better way to go over flakes in larger production systems as they are:
Easier to handle
less prone to cloging auto feeders
typically float longer
and spoil in the water slower

All around a better way to go.

[David - WI]

To have multiple crops coming market ready every week, you're talking 10's of thousands of gallons in constant circulation.

We could pump about 100 thousand gallons per hour, in this "pilot" portion, if we had to.

What's your plan for the biproduct from the fish? Texas A&M I beleive it was, I could be wrong. Released a study in pdf about problems feeding fish parts back to the fish even if processed as feed. It's been a while but it was either a hormone or an lipid acid or something that it prevented being utilized. Or something...it was years ago I read it and would have to find it again. But it's a similar problem to feeding predatory fish ONLY feeder goldfish. It creates problems for the fish later on.

If we harvest 1000 pounds of fish per week we should get 500 to 550 pounds of fish parts per week. We'll be feeding that much every day... in other words, we probably couldn't make enough fish guts & heads in a week to feed the fish for even a day.

[foodchain]

By itself. But you still have to dispose of it somewhere. I have looked into incinerators, bioreactors for methane, animal feed, fertilizer, etc and haven't foudn a financialy viable end product for the biproducts put out.

[David - WI]

Worst case scenario, we put the garbage bags of fish guts in a chest freezer (so they don't stink up the place) until the dumpster pick-up day and put them in before they dump it. We're talking about probably 6 or 8 bags a week... they dump it every week whether there's anything in it or not.

[keith_r]

get a cement mixer, grind it up, ferment and sell as fertilizer, producing another income stream, as well as eliminating waste output;

http://www.northernontariobusiness.com/ ... -deep.aspx

[David - WI]

It's a good idea. Funny too, one of my first jobs was driving a ready-mix concrete truck.

I'm not sure I could get away with it here in the city.