Gamefish Pellets?

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jandb

jandb

Piranha
MFK Member
Jan 18, 2009
947
174
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Lewis Center, OH
Hello. I stock our neighborhood pond each year with largemouth, bluegill, etc. The company we buy the fish from sells a gamefish pellet in both 1/8" and 1/4" size. They claim it contains at least 35% minimum protein and the kicker is a 30# bag is $25. Do you think this is sufficient for large SA cichlids along with supplementing other foods. It'd be a heck of a lot cheaper than name brand cichlid pellets.
 
Always check the additives, ash, and other by-products added to the game feed (or any pond pellet). A lot of them use clay as binders. It's not noticed in pond feeding but, these additives make a heck of a mess in aquariums. Blood meal is also a frequent ingredient in these low-end pond pellets and can ruin your bio-filtration. "You get what you pay for" is not just a cliche when comparing feed prices.
 
Among many things, you should be concerned not with protein content, but with digestible protein content. E.g., brewers yeast, corn and wheat can raise protein % and not be fully digested by most if any fish. For example, for fish that evolved on diets of other fish, crustaceans, insects, foods that lead off (in the ingredient list) with products like fish, shrimp, krill, white fish are likely to be far superior (in terms of protein) to those foods composed of plant proteins.

Of course, as Oddball has stated, there are more ingredients to look at as well. Much like cat and dog food sellers, there are low cost producers that will offer products that aren't the best for your pet but are offered to attract highly cost sensitive buyers.
 
Oddball said:
Always check the additives, ash, and other by-products added to the game feed (or any pond pellet). A lot of them use clay as binders. It's not noticed in pond feeding but, these additives make a heck of a mess in aquariums. Blood meal is also a frequent ingredient in these low-end pond pellets and can ruin your bio-filtration. "You get what you pay for" is not just a cliche when comparing feed prices.
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+1, pellet foods are very different from brand to brand, cheaper means more filler in almost ALL dry foods for any type of animals.
 
jandb said:
Good point guys. Saving a few bucks on food isn't worth it after spending spending thousands on lifestock and equipment.
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Never skimp lol...all my animals get the best diets for them, including my fish. My ferrets get raw meat, and my fish get whatever gives them the best possible nutrition, which is 90% prepared foods, 5% live feeders and insects, 5% pellets haha.
 
One can save a lot with, say $15-$19 per 50 lb bag of floating pellets from Tractor Supply and other country stores. But the ingredients are ~all of terrestrial plant origin, highly processed. Fish digest the best wholesome foods of aquatic or, if not (entirely) aquatic then at least cold-blooded animal origin, something close or closer to what they evolved to eat in the wild.

AFAIU, these cheap pellets are meant to attract the pond, lake, river fish to the feeding spot so you can see them and interact, etc., but the fish get to eat what they eat in the wild too, or mostly. Not so in an aquarium.

I buy Ziegler bros. pellets manufactured for fish farms as these are a bit better (~$1 a pound with shipping) but ultimately the best appear to be Hikari, NLS, Ken's, etc. It does appear that there are no convenient shortcuts in the trade of fish foods. The best are always expensive, $10+ per pound. The worst are the above mentioned at ~$0.3-$0.5 a pound.

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Oddball, can you please expand on the bloodmeal's danger to filtration?
 
That ingredients list is absolutely terrible for fish....you may as well feed low quality dog food to those fish.
 
There are some lower cost, high protein trout foods, that aren't too bad. I would only use as a supplemental food for pond fish, once every couple weeks or so.
 
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