Vegan /vegetarian fish food
- Thread starter Savethemall
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For those that are new to some of the science involved in feeding fish - wheat, including wheat gluten, has been used for many years in commercial fish feed. It's main use for decades was/is as a binding agent. But like all terrestrial sources of starch, as explained in earlier comments it's use must be limited. Some manufacturers actually split it up on their ingredient list, so that wheat doesn't end up as the 1st or second ingredient in their food. Omega is a good example, one of their products sitting in front of me shows the ingredient list starts with Salmon and Whole Herring, followed by Wheat Germ, Wheat Flour, Shrimp, Pea Protein, Wheat Gluten, Kelp etc. Add up all 3 wheat products, and who knows how the raw ingredients, listed by law in order of dry weight, actually plays out? Look how far we have come in the science of feeding fish in 2023! LOL
Pretty soon we should be full circle, back to feeding Tapioca Flour (some already are) and Wheat Middling's!
I have posted the following, or some form of it, for the past 25 yrs or so. I think that it bears repeating ........
In nature, mbuna do not just eat algae, and they are not vegans.
In the wild, the cichlids found in the Rift Lakes have evolved & adapted to living in certain niches of the lake, which over time has forced them to become specialized feeders. (as per Ad Konings) Yet all of these specialized feeders will readily eat anything that's available. (as per Ad Konings) While a fish classified as a strict herbivore (such as a Tropheus moorii) may indeed spend its entire day scraping the aufwuchs, I can assure you that they would much rather eat a handful of worms if given the opportunity. In the wild they eat low quality foods because that's the only foods available, not because they choose to!
And while Tropheus and various Mbuna species may in fact be classified by the scientific community as strict herbivores, the reality is that even though algae dominates the stomach contents, the actual foods that make them grow are insect nymphs and larvae, crustaceans, snails, mites, micro-organisms, and zoo plankton, not vegetable matter. (as per Ad Konings)
Their long digestive tracts are designed as such so that in nature they can break down the complex plant matter that they consume, which doesn't mean that they can't properly assimilate more easily digestible forms of protein. Apparently this is a concept that some hobbyists fail to grasp.
Keep in mind that the vast majority of fish are opportunistic feeders, and are all omnivorous to a certain extent. Cichlids classified as carnivores don't just eat meat, any more than a herbivorous cichlid just consumes vegetable matter.
I prefer more nutrient dense pellets over flakes etc when feeding the vast majority of algivores, including mbuna, tropheus, etc that fall under this classification. When it comes to herbivores, especially algivores I also prefer to cover a wide variety of aquatic based plant matter in the food as in the wild most freshwater as well as marine species tend to seek out and consume very specific types of plant matter, be it diatoms (Tropheus brichardi) green algae such as Cladophora (Tropheus moorii), or the filamentous green algae Mougeotia preferred by adult O. lidole in Lake Malawi. The fish in the Rift Lakes are no different than various marine fish that for whatever reason (nutrient content or availability) consume specific algae, some preferring red algae over brown, or green.
As a side note, Ad Konings has probably spent more years collecting and studying these Rift Lake cichlids, than the rest of the free world combined.
I think that if one really dives into studying what most fish consume in nature, you'll find that this same thing repeats itself with the vast majority of species.
Just something to think about. Again, good luck with your research.
In nature, mbuna do not just eat algae, and they are not vegans.
In the wild, the cichlids found in the Rift Lakes have evolved & adapted to living in certain niches of the lake, which over time has forced them to become specialized feeders. (as per Ad Konings) Yet all of these specialized feeders will readily eat anything that's available. (as per Ad Konings) While a fish classified as a strict herbivore (such as a Tropheus moorii) may indeed spend its entire day scraping the aufwuchs, I can assure you that they would much rather eat a handful of worms if given the opportunity. In the wild they eat low quality foods because that's the only foods available, not because they choose to!
And while Tropheus and various Mbuna species may in fact be classified by the scientific community as strict herbivores, the reality is that even though algae dominates the stomach contents, the actual foods that make them grow are insect nymphs and larvae, crustaceans, snails, mites, micro-organisms, and zoo plankton, not vegetable matter. (as per Ad Konings)
Their long digestive tracts are designed as such so that in nature they can break down the complex plant matter that they consume, which doesn't mean that they can't properly assimilate more easily digestible forms of protein. Apparently this is a concept that some hobbyists fail to grasp.
Keep in mind that the vast majority of fish are opportunistic feeders, and are all omnivorous to a certain extent. Cichlids classified as carnivores don't just eat meat, any more than a herbivorous cichlid just consumes vegetable matter.
I prefer more nutrient dense pellets over flakes etc when feeding the vast majority of algivores, including mbuna, tropheus, etc that fall under this classification. When it comes to herbivores, especially algivores I also prefer to cover a wide variety of aquatic based plant matter in the food as in the wild most freshwater as well as marine species tend to seek out and consume very specific types of plant matter, be it diatoms (Tropheus brichardi) green algae such as Cladophora (Tropheus moorii), or the filamentous green algae Mougeotia preferred by adult O. lidole in Lake Malawi. The fish in the Rift Lakes are no different than various marine fish that for whatever reason (nutrient content or availability) consume specific algae, some preferring red algae over brown, or green.
As a side note, Ad Konings has probably spent more years collecting and studying these Rift Lake cichlids, than the rest of the free world combined.
I think that if one really dives into studying what most fish consume in nature, you'll find that this same thing repeats itself with the vast majority of species.
Just something to think about. Again, good luck with your research.
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I remember seeing that post before, along with the Tapioca Wafer one
, and I remember being surprised that one particular aspect of this often goes unmentioned. It seems obvious that these fish will not only greedily consume whatever high-quality animal protein they can get, but that they are consuming it constantly in the form of small animal life living within the algae they are targeting. As any child...of any age!...who spends much of his time turning over rocks and peering into stagnant ponds can tell you, the thick layer of algae covering almost everything is literally crawling with small organisms, eating it and eating each other. When those "herbivorous" cichlids work over those surface with their specially-adapted mouths and teeth, they certainly aren't picking these little critters out; the whole mix goes down the hatch, algae, detritus, eggs, bugs, worms, you name it. I can't imagine what percentage of the total intake that animal component takes up, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it could be 5 or 10%, perhaps even sometimes more.Maybe those fish aren't swimming around seeking algae to eat! Maybe they are just really lousy predators, who have little animal protein available to them that they are capable of catching and so they are forced to resort to gumming mouthfuls of green stuff in the hope of getting a decent portion of bugs.
I'm sort of the same way when it comes to spaghetti; the pasta itself is fairly bland and tasteless, and it really serves as a meat-sauce-delivery-vehicle allowing me to enjoy the dish as a whole.Joking aside...watch a cow grazing a field, or a deer browsing twigs, or a koala or sloth hoovering down leaves. They aren't being picky; there is no way that they can possibly avoid consuming the small animal life that lives in and on that food. And if they have evolved to eat that way over millennia, then it stands to reason that the animal component of that diet, limited as it may be, is also an essential part of it, whether or not they are specifically targeting it.
Certainly, "pure carnivores" get a certain amount of plant matter from the gut and digestive tract of animals they consume. This is exactly the same thing, just in reverse. I would defy anyone to come up with an example of a "herbivorous" animal that doesn't actually receive any animal protein in its natural diet. And, I hasten to add that if such an example can be found...it isn't reasonable to hoist it up as "proof" that such a pure vegetarian diet is natural or preferable or even sustainable for most creatures. The fact that it is so difficult to locate that rare example speaks volumes about how poor a pure vegetarian feeding strategy must be.
Yes those 2 are an option.
The problem with the first is that I will still have to build them a whole food diet, I mean making sure they will al they need from those scraps and the veggies I'll add. And I'm not sure how to do it completley since I didnt find specific nutritional needs of Pnagasius Sanitwongsai. Only some info regarding hypopothalmus and some general on catfish.
The second optione is probably better and easier, I m just not sure I'll find a commercial food that is made completely from scraps. Do you have any ideas?
Thanks again for an informative response.
I do aware of what you mentioned and I do know that it is pretty much the same with terrestrial herbivores.
It's pretty clear to me that if a vegan diet would be found to some specice of fish, it wouldn't be build solely of the natural food that he would've been consuming. It will be something build from ingridients from all over the world in order to replace the nutrients that originally planned to be consumed from meat.
This is by the way kind of true about humans as well. It would be much much harder for a human to be vegan if all he would consume is the natural flora that is available on his area(for example in the hunters-gatherers era)
Interesting. I would have guessed that shipping esoteric ingredients from the four corners of the globe...just to hopefully satisfy a need that could be easily addressed using local stuff (like meat)...might be a much less environmentally-conscious and much more ecologically destructive activity than using tried-and-proven locally sourced stuff (like meat).
I guess my carnivorous meat-addled brain simply does not grasp the Big Picture.
All that produce that goes into a vegan diet... How much land, how many smaller animals and diverse ecosystems of invertebrates do you think were destroyed/are actively kept at bay to support the growth of these crops? How much land is allocated to horticulture? Just because we aren't eating those animals doesn't mean we aren't killing them. Fish foods made with food industry byproducts are probably your best bet morally, since there isn't anything extra being done to the environment to provide the protein for those.
Yes, but once you get the scraps, and grind it up, It will be just like any fish food recipe. You will no longer need to find a vegan recipe, just treat the ground scraps like any other fish meal/sludge in a good recipe. Fish heads, tails, and spines are very nutritious, as far as I know.
My guess is that MOST commercial food is made of scraps, at least the fish meal. Even companies like Omega One, who advertise whole fish, do the opposite. You can start by emailing companies and see what they say. However, I doubt many food companies would admit they are sourcing from scraps, as it makes their product seem cheap.
Considering that most foods use scraps, even if you pick a food company at random, the environmental impact will likely be negligible.
Most commercial feeds use fish meal derived from whole fish, fatty fish, such as herring, sardines, menhaden, etc. In fact, the vast majority of the industries fish meal is made up from whole fish. The value is based on the quality, as in protein level, of the finished product.
