tilapia feed suppliers

[urbanrunoff]

I would avoid commercially produced organic feeds. They are going to cost more than the fish are worth, and they won't be any healthier. If you get serious, you can produce your own feed and certify how you make it. Organic certification doesn't mean what you'd think it means.

Here is an example,
Raise pigs loaded with hormones and foraging on plants loaded with pesticides. Take their manure to fertilize a pond that you are growing tilapia in. You can certify the fish as organically grown.

.

I think that is exactly what they are working on, clear standards that would not allow such practices. Up until now the organic label on fish products was no guarantee.

I'm not hung up on "organic" label. but i want to make sure that what i feed my fish is not some fish scraps from a fishfram that uses contaminated manure as feed...

on a side note, it's kinda cool that Trader joe promises to offer only sustainable fish products by 2010 after the entire Traitor joe debacle, it is all slowly moving in the right direction.

[urbanrunoff]

ernie: i might have an IN for the pizzaport tilapia. The owner's kid goes to the same school then my oldest daughter.

I just got a sample of "all natural" senior dog food (low fat) the tilapias love it.

[badflash]

Lots of ways to deal with it. If you have a way to dry & make pellets, that is the best. Otherwise, acclimate the tilapia to the grain, then turn off the filters, feed then what they will eat, and turn the pumps back on. The stuff is messy as-is and will foul up the works if you don't turn the flow off for feeding. Tilapia learn quickly, so this is a 5 minute process if you don't over feed.

[jackalope]

I'm going to jump in here and mention AquaFarms Fish Food as an Aquaculture Feed supplier, and yes, we sell it! We will hopefully be advertising on the DIY site soon! We have made an agreement with a mill so as to produce the most natural food for aquaculture fish as possible. These fish do not eat terrestrial animals in the wild, why would we feed them terrestial animals in captivity, except for the greed of the multi-national corporations? The fish food we sell is all natural (I'm told by our mill that you can no longer get non-GMO soybeans for animal feed anywhere in the US or Canada nowadays), and there are no steroids, no mendicants, no drugs, no hormones, no terrestrial animals in our products. This fish food is for those who intend to eat their fish, as well as for those who raise koi or some other show fish. I try not to feed my fish anything that might pass through them and into my family. It is more expensive than some of the ones mentioned, but if you want a quality feed, you have to pay more.

The FDA has approved the following ingredients for fish food, but not for beef, mutton, pork, or other land animal feeds: Terrestrial animals with Brucellosis, hoof and mouth, BSE (Mad Cow Disease), Trichinosis, Avian flu, (and others). In other words, the cattle, sheep, pigs, and chickens (and other fowl) that are being destroyed for the various diseases mentioned above, can and are being used by the big feed companies as fish feed for both show fish and edible fish. The FDA says that the diseases may/will transmit to humans if fed to terrestrial animals, but they have not yet determined that it will transmit through fish.

AquaFarms Fish Food is a premium commercial fish feed for Tilapia, Catfish, Salmon, Trout, Bass, Koi, Carp, as well as invertebrates such as Shrimp and Crayfish. AquaFarms Fish Food is a High Protein (55%) High Fat (17%) diet for Fry through Fingerling stage, and when they grow into the Young Adult stage they are fed a 40% Protein, 14% Fat Vegetarian diet. Research has shown that the adult stages do not require the higher protein, but must still have a high fat diet.

Remember, if you are planning to eat the fish you are raising, whatever you feed your fish, is going to eventually end up in your body

For more information, please visit our website: See the link on our Supplier's FAQ page

[davidstcldfl]

(I'm told by our mill that you can no longer get non-GMO soybeans for animal feed anywhere in the US or Canada nowadays

Hopefully that will be changing soon.
http://www.non-gmoreport.com/articles/m ... ybeans.php

The fish food sounds interesting Jackalope......I wanted to check it out, but I'm having problems with the link you gave (?)

[GreenPhoenix]

The question that I have to ask however is this -- if you are using non-terrestrial sources for the protein and fat in the aquaculture feeds, where are they coming from? If they are coming from fish stocks suck as herring and menhaden (and almost all others...) then in someways it is not really helping the overall problem of overfishing. Over 97% of every commercial fishery that exists in the world is over-fished to some degree. If we are over-harvesting naturally occurring fishery species simply to produce a feed for our aquaculture industry, than are we really doing anything to make our economy (world) more sustainable?

Sorry about the soap-box rant... I am not meaning to offend anyone, this is just something that I feel very strongly about.

Phoenix

[badflash]

For the most part, fish meal is not something that is fished for, it is a by-product. Taking advantage of something that is otherwise going to a land fill is as green as it gets.

Mixing rice or wheat bran or alfalfa with a little fish meal produces a dandy tilapia feed.

[GreenPhoenix]

Actually Badflash -- actually the Menhaden fishery in the Gulf of Mexico specifically, and many others are primarily fished just for the purpose of fish meal.... While advances have been made to reduce bycatch in many fisheries (shrimp industry for example), the measures are not universally adopted - usually due to the cost of implementation, but often also due to mis-information or ignorance. Regardless, even though BRDs (bycatch reduction devices) will reduce the amount of bycatch in a shrimp net by a factor of 9 or 10, a number of commercial shrimpers do not use them effectively. Additionally, shrimping in other countries is not as "managed" as in the US.......

I personally feel that in order to truly help the existing Natural fisheries, and to promote the beneficial aspects of aquaponics / aquaculture, we need to create sustainable methods of feed production for our animals. Vertical organization would be the best (raising the food necessary for each life stage within the same facility), but significantly more research needs to be done to make that a viable economic alternative... But in the end, that is what drives the bottom line -- expense vs. profit.

Phoenix

[badflash]

AquaFarms Fish Food

Does this feed have anything in it like flax to boost Omega-3?

i'm not certain that Omega-3 would fix inside the fish or pass through, but if it increased the Omega-3 in the final fillet then the fish produced could be marketed as being much healthier than the competition.

Feeding high omega 3 foods to chickens and tilapia have been demonstrated to produce high omega 3 meat. Several studies have been done with Camilina sativa meal.

[jackalope]

The fish food sounds interesting Jackalope......I wanted to check it out, but I'm having problems with the link you gave (?)

It works for me ..... (actually, I forgot the 's' in fish!) THX for letting me know