tilapia feed suppliers

[badflash]

Currently it is impossible for me to say. In the AP system a large portion of their feed is green water, but I can't measure it. I feed a small handfull of feed each day to about a dozen 4" tilapia in the 600 gallon Intex pool. They look pretty fat.

[davidstcldfl]

Hi rfeiller, I feed large duckweed to my tilapia everyday. Ocassionally, other veggies too. I wouldn't think it would be more then about 5% of their diet.
I've seen where duckweed is up to 40% protien, BUT, it must be dried. I dried some, they didn't seem to like it. If that's all they had.... they might eat it (dried).
If I had a way to make it into pellets....they might be more interested in it (?)

[Brier]

A single duckweed plant, dried or live contains the same amount of protein. When it is dried, it is 40% protein by weight. When it is live it might only be 15% protein by weight, the rest is water. Wouldn't it stand to reason that live duckweed is in fact a higher quality feed? I know that quality pasture is better feed than the dried hay cut off of the pasture.
I suppose when it is dried, it has less bulk, and the fish could potentially consume a higher amount in a feeding. What do you guys think?

On a side note, there is a co-op in Ohio working on a new fish feed, and the mill that is producing it is less than a mile from my house. I know some of the employees there, and we get lots of free feed. For instance they call me when they have mislabeled feed, that they cannot sell, I pick it up, and feed it to the hogs. Hopefully they will make some mistakes with the fish food as well. The really cool part of the fish food is that its main ingredient is black soldier fly larva. The larva are being produced by a multimillion dollar composting facility, about an hour north of here. Looks like this is going to be some great feed, and Ohio is very proud of this accomplishment. I look forward to using it.

[badflash]

I've been told that tilapia lose too much energy removing the water. I'd love to see that tested. I can't see that it is true as tilapia can live on green water and algae has more water than duckeed.

As to BSF-
Suggest that they remove the oil before they use it as feed. BSF are something like 50% fat, and that is too much fat for tilapia.

[stucco]

I made several experimental foods for my tilapia out of bsfl and duckweed. The fish wouldn’t eat anything that had the larva in it.

[Brier]

I do hope that they have these bugs worked out, and plan on offering an omnivore diet, as well as a carnivore diet. I assume that they are doing both, as Ohio does have some very large tilapia production projects.

Yeah, I an kind of with you Badflash. How can a fish, born of water have trouble removing water? Especially a predominantly vegetarian species. But then again nature had a design that was productive, but man feels the need to make it more productive. Look what we have done with our cattle. With the feedlots, we have turned them into hogs.

[davidstcldfl]

Brier, That's great that you have a feed mill so close...and get some freebies too...

I'm with you and Badflash on the duckweed. I understand the comment about more protien per weight when dried. But, why mess with nature (?), I'd rather feed it to them fresh.

Here's a link to a great article on duckweed. It's pretty long, it does go over test studys/results of using it as feed for fish of course, but also cattle, chickens and ducks. They even mention human consumption.

http://www.fao.org/Ag/AGAInfo/resources ... DW/Dw2.htm

It really is, a quite amazing little plant.

[badflash]

Great article and good news about the frsh use. I will seed my pool with duckweed today to shade the pool and kill off the green water.

[Brier]

Wow, that is the duckweed bible! Great article, but I don't have time to read it all this morning.
It seems agriculture as an industry has spent a great deal of time trying to reinvent the wheel.

[jackalope]

Great article, there is also a smaller version that is called 'Wolffia' that is called 'water-meal' in Asia ..... they actually dry it and grind it for flour .... some while ago, I saw a site that talked about it, and they made a muffin from it (combined with flour), but were too skeered to take a taste of it, since they had harvested it from their fish pond ........ unbelievable!. I'm hoping that one of these summer days, that I will get some from badflash, but first I've got to get some better weather