Feeding Basa fish fillet as food

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That I did not know! I knew cooking destroyed it along w/ a lot of other things but it is also in plants(granted not commonly eaten ones).. and no raw goldfish... but raw tuna/salmon/ect yes... what temp is it destroyed at? w/ Thiaminases being minimally absorbed by ingestion wouldn't it them be likely "thiamine issues" are a lack of vit b not an "excess" of Thiaminases? or do fish just absorb it far more readily then we do? I actually discovered/learned the human link when I was diagnoses w/ thyroid issues as it can be related ( either the excess of Thiaminases, or lack of B).

Do you think its a lack of B, or excess of Thiaminases? naturally assuming your not ONLY feeding a high Thiaminases fish/food like goldfish.

This is honestly one of those debats/concerns about the pro-live side that I just can't understand... my personal experiances just don't render evidence supporting how "horrible" high thiaminases fish like goldfish
 
I think for it to really become a problem it usually requires a combination of both (excess thiaminases and insufficient thiamine). I think the biggest problem for predatory fish happens when exclusively eating feeders that contain a lot of thiaminases.

In a live fish, the thiaminases are usually contained in specific compartments that prevent them from destroying thiamine in the host fish (which is why fish that contain thiaminases aren't necessarily suffering from thiamine deficiency themselves, and in fact they often contain higher levels of thiamine, presumably to compensate for possible degradation). But once the feeder fish is killed, the thiaminases are released and start to break down the thiamine in the tissue.

I imagine that most thiamine gets absorbed in the intestine, so if the ingested meal is exposed to high levels of thiaminases in the stomach the thiamine might be broken down before it gets a chance to be absorbed. So even though thiamine was initially present in the feeder, the fish isn't getting managing to get enough thiamine. This would also be a problem when feeding frozen feeders, because the thiaminases will have plenty of time to break down the thiamine when the feeders are defrosting.

However, as long as there is another source of thiamine in the diet that isn't being fed at the same time as the thiaminase-rich feeders the fish should be fine.

The analogous situation would apply to people - if you ate a lot of raw fish or ferns that were rich in thiaminases then that specific meal is potentially going to contain insufficient thiamine because it might get degraded in your stomach before getting absorbed. But as long as you consumed other sources of thiamine at other times you should be fine (a lot of nuts and seeds are usually a good source).

With regards to your other question, the temp required to destroy thiaminases varies depending on the organism that the thiaminase comes from, because different thiaminases have evolved to function at an optimal temperature for that organism. In the case of thiaminases derived from ferns, they starts to degrade at around 65oC so anything above that should be fine. I would guess thiaminase from fish would degrade at a lower temperature.

One thing to note about this though is that cooking the food should inactive the thiaminases, but it would probably also break down the thiamine itself so that's probably not all that useful. The trick would be to heat the food to destroy the thiaminases and then add some supplemental thiamine after it has cooled.

Incidentally, there is an additional level of complication which is that different species and individuals have different requirements for thiamine. In the case of the thyroid relationship that you mentioned, having hyperthyroidism can increase a persons' metabolism and this means that they need to consume more thiamine than normal to compensate.

Sorry for the long rambling post. Probably more than you wanted to know.
 
Nope, can never learn to much.. and you'll never know it all..

And your rambling actually made a lot of sense and put a few ?'s together. It's always been said not to "cook" your fish before feeding it to your pets... but I'm wondering if a vitamin supplement was added afterwards if this would be a safe method of feeding High Thiamanese fish. It would also make sense that 100% piscevoroues fish such as gar ( well 99% I suppose as they'll eat frogs, insects ect) rarely if ever have issues while species like Oscars who are omnivorses can easily die fed the same diet of strictly goldfish ect.

OP I think in a nutshell Basa should be fine as long as its not being treated with other things... and its not the only source of food.
 
Thank you The_deeb & Amy.
It was quite informative and the notion of boiling is interesting.
What kind of supplemental thiamine can be added in that case? Also, any suggestions on what vitamins to be added?
 
Mainly B vitamins but I would expect a good quality pellet like NLS ect that has a broad spectrum of vitamins/mins as a good 40% of the diet would be sufficient. ( I've generally fed 40/60 or 50/50 and never had symptoms of thiamine defficency in fish) VitaChem is a liquid vitamin supplement I've used In the past as well to soak lower quality pellets in before feeding as well ( you can add it directly to the water but I found pre-soaking worked best). Otherwise I would look at health food type stores that sell suppliments. I'm a pretty strong believer in natural ways to get my vitamins ect so you may also simply feed/stuff thiamine rich ingredients into your fillets ect as well.

I would think from what I've gathered from deeb that pre-soaking the pellets opposed to trying to "fortify" fillets would be more beneficial since you be feeding at different times/amounts ideally and there would be no Thiamanese to break down the thiamine saturated pellets. ie feed fillets one or 2 days then fast a day.. then feed pellets for 1-2days fortified ect... trying to avoid "mixing" but still offering a wide variety to the diet. and I'm not sure if cooking would defeat the purpose altogether of offering fresh fish as it would likely break down other nutreinets lacking in pellets.

and there I go rambling...
 
I've fed the Bassa/swai to my fish as well as to myself lol.
 
Your rambling is very much helpful Amy :). I do give a varied diet and also fast them for a day but never added any vitamins in the food except for the pellets from hikari. Gonna try my hands on it and the basa just gives me more variety ;)


krichardson said:
I've fed the Bassa/swai to my fish as well as to myself lol.
Click to expand...

Yea I've tasted them. Was good :D
 
I've only bought it once as I prefer the taste of domestic catfish over the Basa...My fish didn't seem to mind one over the other.
 
I feed my big fish tilapia fillets at least two times a week goldfish once a week and krill and pellets the rest of the time, but only cold water krill because it is suppose to be easy to digest and more nutritious.
 
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