FEEDING YOUR FISH>>>
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| There are a mind boggling number of koi and goldfish foods currently on the market. The nutrition you provide your fish will help determine what it grows up to look like. If you want healthy fish with the best conformation and color in your pond, a well-balanced diet is a must. But what IS a well balanced diet? Koi and goldfish are omnivorous, which means they eat both plant and animal material. In nature, koi use the highly sensitive smell receptors in their barbels (whiskers) to find food. Additionally, both koi and goldfish are naturally engineered to be bottom feeders. But this ain't nature, remember? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Let me start by saying that what and when you feed your fish is entirely determined by the water temperature. DO NOT, under any circumstances, feed your fish when the water temperature is at or below 55 degrees fahrenheit. Typically, fish won't be interested in food once the water temperature drops to 55 degrees, but there are some beggers out there that are so conditioned to come to the surface and eat that you may be tempted to feed them. The truth is that koi and goldfish, being cold-blooded animals, can't process food they have ingested in water temperatures under 55 degrees and the food will stay in their system and rot. Feeding them, even if they act hungry, in cold water conditions can cause serious illness due to the rotting food in their systems during their weakest time. They need all the strenght and build up immunity they have stored to make it through the long winter months. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In the spring, when your fish are just coming out of their dormancy period (and the water temperature tops 55 degrees), their systems can't yet handle a food with a high protein content, and because of that, if you feed them a food high in protein, most of the protein will be excreted back into the water as ammonia. Since your beneficial filter bacteria is just getting up and running in the spring, it won't be able to handle the excess ammonia, and this ammonia will build up in your system and possibly kill your fish. At the very least, it will put your fish under undue stress when their immune systems are at their weakest. Some koi owners start their koi on medicated food (see Medications) in the spring for this very reason, but any koi food with a protein content of less than 30% will work. As a matter of fact, Cheerios will do just fine until the water temperatures top 65 degrees. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Once the water temperature reaches 65 degrees fahrenheit, you can switch to a higher protein food. In either case, only feed your fish as much as they'll eat in five (5) minutes. If they are still acting hungry, you can feed them more, but it's important not to over feed them and have a bunch of rotting food pellets floating around or stuck to the skimmer net. Part of the joy of owning a pond is feeding your fish, so take a minute to WATCH your fish eat. This is a good time to visually inspect your fish for signs of stress or infection, so take advantage of it. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The best foods do not have corn or corn by-products listed in the top three ingredients. Corn is used as a filler in many packaged pet foods, and feeding something with a high filler content will only cause your fish to produce more waste. They will also eat more food with a high filler content because their bodies aren't getting the nutrition they need, so it's a lose/lose situation. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| My suggestion is that if you are determined to buy off the shelf, you READ THE LABEL and become familiar with the nutritional content of the foods available to you. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Another VERY important consideration is freshness. Don't buy food in bulk because it's cheap if your fish are not going to be able to consume it in a couple of months - tops. If you are buying off the shelf at a major retailer, please keep in mind that the foods they are offering as "high quality" are often imported from Japan, which means that these little (and often expensive) bags of food may have spent several weeks as cargo in the bottom of some ship before they were delivered to the distributor, who then sends them out to the retailer, who may keep them in storage for MONTHS until the pond season starts up again. The truth is that retailers can get HUGE discounts on foods purchased at the end of the season, making it more economically for them to buy it then if they have the space to store it. Check for a freshness date, or better yet, a manufacture date, to ensure the best food for your consumer dollar. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| CLICK HERE TO GO TO PAGE 2 OF FEEDING YOUR FISH>>> |
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