Although some people on this site do feed cat food, dog food, hot dogs, and god only knows what else, over the long haul these types of foods are not healthy for a fish.
The crude fat content found in most cat food will be a minimum of 15-20%, which means it could be well over 20% in some formulas. That alone would keep me from feeding that food to fish as it is simply way too high (over double) the fat content that most warm water fish can metabolize & utilize as an energy source.
All of that excess fat settles around the liver, and reduces the lifespan of the fish.
To quote Dr. Ruth Francis-Floyd, a professor at the U of Florida whom is considerd by many to be an expert on fish nutrition;
Monitoring how your fish appear in your tank won't give you an inside view of fat deposition around their liver. There are studies involving carnivorous species fed high fat (17%) diets, which resulted in excess liver deposition, which if fed over a prolonged period would result in necrosis of the liver.
If cost/savings is an issue, you would be far better off buying a decent quality commercial bulk feed from a feed mill, or your local hardware store. Like most things in life, you get what you pay for.
The crude fat content found in most cat food will be a minimum of 15-20%, which means it could be well over 20% in some formulas. That alone would keep me from feeding that food to fish as it is simply way too high (over double) the fat content that most warm water fish can metabolize & utilize as an energy source.
All of that excess fat settles around the liver, and reduces the lifespan of the fish.
To quote Dr. Ruth Francis-Floyd, a professor at the U of Florida whom is considerd by many to be an expert on fish nutrition;
Monitoring how your fish appear in your tank won't give you an inside view of fat deposition around their liver. There are studies involving carnivorous species fed high fat (17%) diets, which resulted in excess liver deposition, which if fed over a prolonged period would result in necrosis of the liver.
If cost/savings is an issue, you would be far better off buying a decent quality commercial bulk feed from a feed mill, or your local hardware store. Like most things in life, you get what you pay for.
You're awesome dude. You always have these great analitical answers on all these kind of posts. just saying. Keep up the good work man.
Also, there are some dog/cat foods out on the market now that are based on fish protein/fat, but again those foods are still way too high in fat content to be feeding to fish on a regular basis. The same would apply to some of the various feed mill products designed for cold water species such as trout/salmon, most are typically far too high in fat content to be fed to tropical species of fish.