Goldfish are Nutritious
- Thread starter sjkoi
- Start date
I would totally agree with the above comments IF one was buying low cost generic farm feed by the truck load. LOL
Today's modern freezer trawlers are multi-million dollar high tech computerized vessels, with many of them having onboard fish meal plants so processing is immediate.
Also, not all fish meal is made from "scraps", as you stated, some fish meals, such as Herring meal are made from the whole fish. And with today's demand from commercial aquaculture, quality fish meal isn't sitting anywhere for extended periods of time. LOL
Almost everything that you just posted is nothing more than a worse case scenario of what might, maybe, could be the case with some lower quality products, and the rest is just totally bogus info.
As an example .......
When stored under ideal conditions (cool, dark, dry environment) stabalized vitamin c in the form of L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate will last a hell of a lot longer than just a few months.
Where do you come up with this stuff?
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-7345.1989.tb00568.x/abstract
And that's when stored at 40 C (104F) and with only 153 mg/kg being utilized in the formula.
More info on vitamin c retention in the link below, when stored at 72F for 0, 90, and 270 days. http://www.labdiet.com/pdf/shelf-5025.pdf
Now that we have come full circle this will be much easier for me, I can just cut & paste previous comments.
This one is from post # 35.You talk about "best science", yet so far you offer up none. Yes, there are manufacturers that make low cost feeds that have high carb content from terrestrial sources, poor vitamin & trace mineral content, and perhaps even low cost sources of protein such as feather meal. This too is not news to anyone who is seriously in the hobby.
There are also those that use nothing but premium raw ingredients, and extrude at what industry standards would be considered low temps, where the vitamin content of those raw ingredients is still largely intact at post processing.
NRC Nutrient Requirements of Fish 1993
I've seen post production nutritional analysis reports on the commercial pelleted fish food that I use (and others), performed by non-biased 3rd party accredited institutions, and what you state simply isn't factual. You are using a very broad brush to paint a picture that clearly does not apply to all pellet feeds. You can be as skeptical as you like, but you have yet to bring any real "facts" to this nutrition discussion, just the ramblings of someone who seemingly wants to prove that feeder goldfish supply a better nutritional profile than all other types of feeds. You state that you want "good information" yet when that is offered you turn a blind eye.
The beauty of pelleted food is that a manufacturer can fine tune the nutrient profile of his feed to any level that he chooses. The fact that some manufacturers may fail in this area doesn't mean that we should throw out the baby with the bath water.
Let's use one common essential vitamin as an example, one that piscivores are not capable of producing themselves, one that must be supplied via the diet, Vitamin C.
A manufacturer can use raw ingredients that contain enough Vitamin C in just the raw ingredients of their formula to GREATLY exceed all minimum values that have been determined in any/all species of fish that to date have been studied in aquaculture circles. Just to toss out a number, let's use 400 mg/kg - in just the post production levels of the raw ingredients. A number that already greatly exceeds the "total" amount found in most farm feeds.
If a manufacturer have any concerns about potential bioavailability, nutrient levels, or potential loss during storage, they can then supplement with additional Vitamin C, very stable forms of Vitamin C, such as L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate. Not the highly degradable forms of the past, such as regular Ascorbic Acid. So just to toss out another number, let's say they add an additional 400-500 mg/kg of supplemental Vitamin C, the total Vitamin C content is now in the 800+ mg/kg range. (at post production levels)
Add that to a dense, extruded, sinking pellet, and the amount of Vitamin C loss when tossed into ones aquarium is minuscule, unless that pellet sits in the water for an extended period of time, which shouldn't be happening if one is feeding properly. If the food is eaten immediately, within a few minutes, that pellet will still contain the vast majority of its Vitamin C content, at a level that will exceed even the most high stress conditions that a fish may be placed under in an aquarium setting. If that feed is then stored properly, in a cool, dry, dark environment, the overall nutrient loss, including Vitamin C - would again be minuscule, unless that feed is being stored for several years.
You don't just open up a container several times and sudenly ALL of the vitamins go *poof* into thin air. The main concerns over the years about nutrient loss in pellet feed was due to many "farm feeds" containing only the bare minimum values, so yes in those cases nutrient loss in any form was something to be concerned about, for a commercial farmer.
And that's just one small example of how things can work if a manufacturer makes the effort to do things right. Most generic farm feeds are lucky if they have a fraction of that level of Vitamin C content intact at post production levels. Unless one is gut loading a goldfish with supplements immediately prior to feeding a piscivore, I'm guessing that the Vitamin C values of that food source would also be next to nothing.
Your entire argument is based on a worse/best case scenario, as though ALL commercial foods are equal in raw ingredient quality, nutrient levels, production techniques, etc, and in your opinion "best" if one feeds live flesh/fat from ALL farmed goldfish. Right.
Sorry, but it's not that simplistic, nor is that a fair or even reasonable conclusion in today's market. You need to think outside of the box more, and forget about everything that you have learned or read 25 yrs ago about commercial farm feed manufacturing.
It's a new world out there Rich, welcome to the 21st century.
RD,
Just give him the low down on NLS... Bet that would make him shut up.
Doesn't get fresher than NLS.
Just give him the low down on NLS... Bet that would make him shut up.
Doesn't get fresher than NLS.
I would prefer to leave brand names out of this discussion. There are plenty of commercial products out there that will meet or exceed what Rich has been speculating about.
mhill90,
Well I am glad to make your acquaintance again. I love breeding koi, but marketing the high end fish was draining. That is why I tried working through Ned, but his system for keeping my fish led to a lot of problems. Really nice guy though. Rather than do a subpar job I've stepped back to regroup. That has also meant making a break from posting or contributing articles to Koi USA for now. I am chasing after the Japanese who have a 300 year head start and the odd thing is that its not the breeding that slowed me down, but rather the holding facilities themselves. By the way, I am looking seriously into a technique that grows your own high quality fish food at home and all it takes is kitchen scraps and a five gallon bucket. We have to figure out how to make fish keeping more affordable (be it koi or cichlids) for all of us. The prices they charge for Dainichi or other top tier feeds is an outrage. Having beautiful fish should not be just for the rich. Everyone who wants to show a fish should have a shot at it. It simply ruins the koi hobby when you have people who import $10,000 dollar fish, hold them at the dealers up until show time and then have the dealer drive the fish to the show for their client. If high quality affordable diets were available then the average guy would have the ability to compete, and it would be his skill not his pocketbook that would be represented in that show tank. Same goes here for cichlids and tropical fish.
Rich
Well I am glad to make your acquaintance again. I love breeding koi, but marketing the high end fish was draining. That is why I tried working through Ned, but his system for keeping my fish led to a lot of problems. Really nice guy though. Rather than do a subpar job I've stepped back to regroup. That has also meant making a break from posting or contributing articles to Koi USA for now. I am chasing after the Japanese who have a 300 year head start and the odd thing is that its not the breeding that slowed me down, but rather the holding facilities themselves. By the way, I am looking seriously into a technique that grows your own high quality fish food at home and all it takes is kitchen scraps and a five gallon bucket. We have to figure out how to make fish keeping more affordable (be it koi or cichlids) for all of us. The prices they charge for Dainichi or other top tier feeds is an outrage. Having beautiful fish should not be just for the rich. Everyone who wants to show a fish should have a shot at it. It simply ruins the koi hobby when you have people who import $10,000 dollar fish, hold them at the dealers up until show time and then have the dealer drive the fish to the show for their client. If high quality affordable diets were available then the average guy would have the ability to compete, and it would be his skill not his pocketbook that would be represented in that show tank. Same goes here for cichlids and tropical fish.
Rich
RD,
You know that you aren't going to ever stop replying to my posts no matter how much they irk you because you have too much vested in marketing your brand of feed. It is a new year, but somethings don't change. Such as, I have never heard a feed salesman say they don't use the freshest and highest quality ingredients available. Its always the best. Who would know? If I only had a dollar for every time I heard that claim. Do you really know which trawler brought in your fish meal. Do you know if it was processed at sea or dockside? Really? Do the law of physics suddenly suspend themselves when it comes to NLS (or any other brand) and oxidation suddenly ceases in your bag? Last time I checked my local store that bottle of $20 NLS cichlid chow looked pretty dusty. How fresh is that? Congrats, on making it out to 60 to 90 days on the vitamin C content. I am thinking that bottle was sitting on the shelf for at least that long just since the last time it was dusted. And, what happens to those water soluble vitamins once they hit the water? If the pellet is not consumed immediately they all begin to leach out into the tank. Worse case scenarios? Not at all. Also, why do you think I am just talking about NLS. Its your brand, but most people can't afford it. My posts concerning pellets and flakes are more directed at the staple diets sold at most stores. For every one bottle of NLS sold there are probably a dozen of the other brands. You just have a niche market.
You know that you aren't going to ever stop replying to my posts no matter how much they irk you because you have too much vested in marketing your brand of feed. It is a new year, but somethings don't change. Such as, I have never heard a feed salesman say they don't use the freshest and highest quality ingredients available. Its always the best. Who would know? If I only had a dollar for every time I heard that claim. Do you really know which trawler brought in your fish meal. Do you know if it was processed at sea or dockside? Really? Do the law of physics suddenly suspend themselves when it comes to NLS (or any other brand) and oxidation suddenly ceases in your bag? Last time I checked my local store that bottle of $20 NLS cichlid chow looked pretty dusty. How fresh is that? Congrats, on making it out to 60 to 90 days on the vitamin C content. I am thinking that bottle was sitting on the shelf for at least that long just since the last time it was dusted. And, what happens to those water soluble vitamins once they hit the water? If the pellet is not consumed immediately they all begin to leach out into the tank. Worse case scenarios? Not at all. Also, why do you think I am just talking about NLS. Its your brand, but most people can't afford it. My posts concerning pellets and flakes are more directed at the staple diets sold at most stores. For every one bottle of NLS sold there are probably a dozen of the other brands. You just have a niche market.
Just a few questions during such a vehement debate.
One how do you guys feel about the packages that the fish food comes in? I personally am not a fan of having plastic touch my own food so I try to avoid that as much as possible and in turn do the same for my fish and store most things in glass or ceramic.
Two do you have any concerns about the sustainability/contents of commercially available food?
I often wonder about the sustainability of the resources going into the fish food as well as the potential for contamination via bioaccumulation/biomagnification. To be honest I feed a combination of live that I breed (mollies, gambusia, guppies), combined with worms, insects, and other inverts from the garden (organic), fresh vegetables/fruits for those species that require it, and pelleted food. I have tried both hikari and nls and I'm not completely sold on either one. However, I feel that it is important to offer these pelleted foods especially during winter when my ability to produce a wider variety of foods is limited.
One how do you guys feel about the packages that the fish food comes in? I personally am not a fan of having plastic touch my own food so I try to avoid that as much as possible and in turn do the same for my fish and store most things in glass or ceramic.
Two do you have any concerns about the sustainability/contents of commercially available food?
I often wonder about the sustainability of the resources going into the fish food as well as the potential for contamination via bioaccumulation/biomagnification. To be honest I feed a combination of live that I breed (mollies, gambusia, guppies), combined with worms, insects, and other inverts from the garden (organic), fresh vegetables/fruits for those species that require it, and pelleted food. I have tried both hikari and nls and I'm not completely sold on either one. However, I feel that it is important to offer these pelleted foods especially during winter when my ability to produce a wider variety of foods is limited.
Rich - as long as you keep posting your fact-less comments, I probably will be here responding. It's a dirty job that quite frankly consumes far more of my time that could be better served elsewhere, but I guess someone has to do it.
This certainly isn't my first rodeo, over the years I've swapped spit with the best of them when it comes to fish nutrition, including those that hold degrees in aquaculture, marine biology, zoology, and even those that hold PhDs and who specialize in the field of fish health & nutrition. Compared to some of those discussions, this is mere child's play.
As posted previously, I'm not here to discuss specific brands or formulas, there are plenty of commercial products out there that will meet or exceed what you have constantly been speculating about. No one has to feed any one brand of food to get the job done. I'm not here to sell anyone anything, other than a healthy dose of common sense. I've been promoting the same brand of food for many years, long before I had any vested interest in any brand or product, and I have been promoting sound husbandry practices on forums such as this one since Al Gore invented the internet.
Also please note that I have never once started any type of discussion involving fish food on this forum, but I have probably ended a few. lol You on the other hand have posted nothing but since joining this forum in 2009. feeders-feeders-feeders, blah-blah-blah - yet you still have not offered up anything to support even half of what you've been posting. You know what they say about opinions ....
Honestly, the more you post, the more you prove to anyone still reading this topic just how truly ignorant you are on this subject. In your make believe world the vitamin c content in a sealed container of fish food oxidizes to a zero value before it's even opened. LOL That's funny stuff. This isn't 1950.
Tell you what Rich, you seem keen on experiments, so here's one for you. Take that container at your LFS with the dusty lid that you just mentioned to a certified lab and have it analysed for vitamin c content. They should even be able to break the vitamin c content down showing how much comes from the polyphosphate supplement, and the raw ingredients themselves. Then post back here showing that lab report & those numbers. I suspect that your next argument would be that there is too much vitamins in the food!
docturtle .......... I personally have no issue with plastic touching my fish food (how much actually does - .5%?) anymore than I do having plastic parts from my filters/heaters etc touch my aquarium water, or for that matter the silicone used to seal my tanks. IMO it's a non-issue in the grand scheme of things.
As far as the sustainability/contents of commercially available food, certainly this is a concern, but my concern is with the vast amount of some of these raw ingredients (mainly fish meal) that are used by large scale commercial salmon/trout/tilapia/catfish etc farms, not what's being used to supply feed for ornamental species in the hobby. This is like comparing the 1 ton (or less?) of fish harvested for sale to hobbyists each year from the Rift Lakes, compared to the 100,000-200,000 tons of fish harvested each year for human consumption in these same lakes by commercial fisherman.
In fish food, as the numbers dwindle the cost rises, which eventually forces large scale commercial operations to seek less costly alternatives. (which is already taking place) Once we reach the point of some of these ingredients becoming too cost prohibitive for large scale commercial applications (such as salmon farms, trout farms, etc) the demand will decrease & wild populations will hopefully bounce back to healthy numbers.
Having said that, if we are going to get into how bad mankind has screwed up this planet, someone might want to start a new discussion.
This certainly isn't my first rodeo, over the years I've swapped spit with the best of them when it comes to fish nutrition, including those that hold degrees in aquaculture, marine biology, zoology, and even those that hold PhDs and who specialize in the field of fish health & nutrition. Compared to some of those discussions, this is mere child's play.
As posted previously, I'm not here to discuss specific brands or formulas, there are plenty of commercial products out there that will meet or exceed what you have constantly been speculating about. No one has to feed any one brand of food to get the job done. I'm not here to sell anyone anything, other than a healthy dose of common sense. I've been promoting the same brand of food for many years, long before I had any vested interest in any brand or product, and I have been promoting sound husbandry practices on forums such as this one since Al Gore invented the internet.
Also please note that I have never once started any type of discussion involving fish food on this forum, but I have probably ended a few. lol You on the other hand have posted nothing but since joining this forum in 2009. feeders-feeders-feeders, blah-blah-blah - yet you still have not offered up anything to support even half of what you've been posting. You know what they say about opinions ....
Honestly, the more you post, the more you prove to anyone still reading this topic just how truly ignorant you are on this subject. In your make believe world the vitamin c content in a sealed container of fish food oxidizes to a zero value before it's even opened. LOL That's funny stuff. This isn't 1950.
Tell you what Rich, you seem keen on experiments, so here's one for you. Take that container at your LFS with the dusty lid that you just mentioned to a certified lab and have it analysed for vitamin c content. They should even be able to break the vitamin c content down showing how much comes from the polyphosphate supplement, and the raw ingredients themselves. Then post back here showing that lab report & those numbers. I suspect that your next argument would be that there is too much vitamins in the food!
docturtle .......... I personally have no issue with plastic touching my fish food (how much actually does - .5%?) anymore than I do having plastic parts from my filters/heaters etc touch my aquarium water, or for that matter the silicone used to seal my tanks. IMO it's a non-issue in the grand scheme of things.
As far as the sustainability/contents of commercially available food, certainly this is a concern, but my concern is with the vast amount of some of these raw ingredients (mainly fish meal) that are used by large scale commercial salmon/trout/tilapia/catfish etc farms, not what's being used to supply feed for ornamental species in the hobby. This is like comparing the 1 ton (or less?) of fish harvested for sale to hobbyists each year from the Rift Lakes, compared to the 100,000-200,000 tons of fish harvested each year for human consumption in these same lakes by commercial fisherman.
In fish food, as the numbers dwindle the cost rises, which eventually forces large scale commercial operations to seek less costly alternatives. (which is already taking place) Once we reach the point of some of these ingredients becoming too cost prohibitive for large scale commercial applications (such as salmon farms, trout farms, etc) the demand will decrease & wild populations will hopefully bounce back to healthy numbers.
Having said that, if we are going to get into how bad mankind has screwed up this planet, someone might want to start a new discussion.
RD, the only way you win this argument is if I let you. That is because you are on the wrong side of the facts. It fits though that someone with such a giant ego could believe they have discovered a superior diet than what fish eat naturally in the wild. Why is it that this years fad brand is always so much better than last years? Good quality commercial diets can provide adequate nutrition, but never excellent nutrition. But a pellet also cant be hunted. It cant be stalked. It cant stimulate the natural instincts, which make our fish what they are. A lion in the wild is something to be feared. A lion in the zoo is just a shadow. You see RD, you are not arguing with me but with 100s of millions of years of evolution. I just happen to be pointing that out. Until you come up with a pellet that swims all you got is cooked paste. Its expensive cooked paste, but still just paste.
