# Pellet Feeding



## [email protected] (Dec 22, 2006)

This has been discussed in other threads so I thought I would give it it's own. Here's the three products I'm currently using


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## [email protected] (Dec 22, 2006)

Here's the automatic feeder. The largemouth pellets are too big for this feeder so I feed them by hand









The hopper, timer and battery









Front/model


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## [email protected] (Dec 22, 2006)

My thoughts: Ponds can only produce a limited amount of food on their own. To grow bigger fish, they need an ample and steady supply of food. This can be done by decreasing competition for the food the pond produces, increasing the ponds fertility to increase food production, or supplementing this production with artificial feed.

Reducing competition is the cheapest and safest method to grow bigger fish. You will not grow more pounds of fish by this method, but by removing fish those remaining will grow bigger as the food supply will be divided between a few rather than many. Reduced catch rates are expected when reducing the number of fish. Forage produced in the pond also comes in waves due to forage spawning habits and may not always be available.

Ohio's ponds are usually fairly fertile. The food chain can be boosted by fertilizing the water which increased the production of plankton which carries on through the food chain. I haven't experimented with directly fertilizing the water as it typically isn't recommended in Ohio and is risky. Too high of fertility can result in an oxygen crash and fish kills during turnover, weather events and even at night or under snow cover. This can be offset by high levels of aeration but the type of equipment that can deliver the high levels of gas exchange are expensive to buy, are power hungry and are only effective for a few feet depth in a fairly small area. In very high fertility situations that have the potential to produce results similar to pellet feeding or forage stocking, the system can become dependant on this supplemental aeration and loss of power can result in loss of fish. Anytime more nutrients are added, whether it be in the form of pond fertilizer, added forage, or pellets, fertility will be increased.

Adding forage by stocking minnows or the like is the best way to increase growth of fish who are higher up the food chain. This is also the most expensive and logistically difficult. It takes between 8 and 12 lbs of forage for a higher fish to gain a pound, a 10:1 ratio. Theoretically, say you want to increase the weight of 50 bass by 2 lbs. by stocking supplemental forage. 10x50x2=1000lbs of forage needed. At $7.50 per pound you're looking at a $7500 investment, plus the expense of getting the forage to the pond.

Another option is feeding artificial pellets. Most pond fish will gain around 1 lb. for every 2 lbs. of pellets fed. Good quality pellets go for about 70 cents per pound. So with feed trained bass, you can theoretically put that 2lbs of growth on 50 fish with 200 lbs of feed for $140. The reality is that most ponds don't have feed trained bass so then we're looking at pellet feeding to increase the pounds of forage produced. In this scenario, we're trying to grow 1000 lbs of our own forage within the pond. Now the pounds of feed is bumped 2000lbs at a cost of $1400 (plus the expense of getting the feed to the pond and time/optional equipment involved in feeding)...still a fraction of the cost of buying forage fish...but it will take more time to grow the forage base rather than just dumping it in.

When I first built my pond, I couldn't wait to have catchable size fish. Buying full grown fish was cost prohibitive and catching fish from elsewhere and transferring is both risky as far as disease, logistically impractical, and I wanted to make sure that I was getting young fish with the most growth potential. Through reseach about stocking I came across the use of feed trained bass and went with a very standard bass/bluegill/fathead plan stocking a low ratio of 3-4" bass year after bluegill. At the time, big bass was my goal. I was certainly on a budget and after calculating the costs for my options, I began feeding a high protein trout diet. Near the second anniversery of those 3-4" bluegill I stocked, they had grown to a chunky 9-10" which I was very happy about but the trout feed company eventually went out of business. I began feeding Gamefish Chow for awhile and noticed growth wasn't as good as it was on the trout diet, and the fish just weren't as fat. I raised chickens for 4-H as a kid and knew the type of feed, especially protein content played a big part in growth. There was around a 15% protein difference between the two feeds, Gamefish Chow being about 32%. Body builders don't gain muscle by eating Doritos, neither do fish. Quality protein is the key to growth. 5 or 6% protein can make a big difference in chickens, why not fish, so I began searching for other feeds. Aquamax 400 was the most comparable to the early trout diet I was feeding. It was readily available through Purina's network of dealers as well. I fed it exlusively for around a year but it is very tiny, it seemed like my bass and larger bluegill were working too hard to get a mouthfull of pellets. I liked the multiple sizes that were in the Gamefish Chow so I began mixing the 400 with 500. Somewhere between 2006 and 2007, I had read about bass raised in cages on these Aquamax products showing signs of fatty livers and concerns of long term health were raised. Fish never stop growing so lifespan is also important for them to reach their potential. There have also been reports of pond owners not being able to grow bass much over 5 or 6 pounds on pellets alone. I had always had the concern of how healthy feeding artificial feed to fish was which is why I looked at pellet feeding as supplemental to natural forage and not an exclusive diet...feeding pellets to fill in for those times when forage is low, to increase the pounds of forage and to directly feed those bass willing to eat pellets. Most feeds produced are geared toward growing fish to a target market weight, not necessarily to the biggest they can get.

Around 2007, Purina developed a largemouth pellet. Someone there had seen the giant bass coming from California lakes that received trout plantings and decided to model a pellet after the nutitional profile of trout. The result was a pellet with protein near the Aquamax 400 but lower fat, and is simply huge...well suited for a largemouth. This lower fat, high protein was a no brainer and I got one of the first bags. My bass were a little suspicious of these 1" pellets at first but target them now. They're also big enough that the bass are not competing with bluegill for them.


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## Taco (Jan 4, 2009)

Good stuff [email protected] I always appreciate your insight.


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## [email protected] (Dec 22, 2006)

Thanks Taco, I hope it's helpful to someone.

Feeding pellets isn't the end all answer and is not without risk. It is a useful too that can help push these fish a little further when used in conjuction with population and water quality management.

Feeding pellets will increase fertility (through digested or undigested feed) which will at least make the water greener and/or cause existing weeds to grow more. It will affect every pond differently. Ponds where water is flushed out and replenished often or have supplemental aeration can handle more feed/waste and will show less effects than unaerated low flow ponds. More weeds can result in greater expense in management of them. Of course, increased planktonic algae shading can decrease bottom weeds too.

This increased fertility does have a secondary benefit though as described in the first post....boosting the food chain from the bottom up. This is one reason some tilipia farms are able to grow more than a pound of tilapia off of less than a pound of feed in grow out ponds. This is also due to Tilapia having gill rakers that take better advantage of the plankton increase than most Ohio pond fish.

Increasing the pounds of fish also increases the demand for oxygen and incombination with increased fertility can increase the risk for a fish kill. The general visual rule of thumb on how fertile your water should be ideally is 16" of visability in water that isn't muddy. Technically a secchi disk (a white and black disk resembling a nuclear symbol) is used for this measurement but most any white/black item sunk until it first disappears will give you an idea. Sometime I just look how deep I can see bottom and use my fishing rod to check the depth at that spot. If this level of visability decreases to say 8"...it's probably time to cutoff feeding and explore options to decrease fertility. 

Just like us, fish can only eat so much at a time, though bass and channel cats don't seem to know this fact. Feeding multiple times per day allows fish to take in more food each day than just one feeding. I did this by hand for several years but usually once a day was about the best I could do consistantly. An automatic feeder is just more reliable than I am. My feeder is set to go off just after dawn and just before dark. I adjust the timer about once a month. I may add a third feeding midday when temps are warmer, but not hot, if the fish tell me they want it. The feeder I have can be set for up to 6 times per day and feed various volumes at each time. Even on the lowest volume setting it delivers quite a bit of feed for the amount of fish I have in my 1/2 acre pond so I've never gone to more than 3 feedings per day. The advantage to a floating feed is that it's pretty easy to monitor their feeding habits. I still feed the largemouth pellets by hand because they take a specialized feeder due to their size and I enjoy going out to the dock in the evening. Some of my bass recognize the yellow feed bucket and follow me around the pond. The disadvantage to the automatic feeder is that it will feed even if the fish aren't hungry due to a cold front or the wind is blowing hard which can result in some wasted feed that could be avoided if hand feeding. Fortunately I have 3 labs that don't mind cleaning up any feed that makes it to shore. My oldest lab is 12 and looks 5 so I don't think it's hurting them. 

I should also mention that it's best to mount the feeder on a dock that sticks out into deeper water on the West side of the pond so prevailing winds can carry it across the water rather than onto shore. Feeding in shallow water can make your fish easy prey for herons. My dock is small and my feeder makes it almost unusable when it's on it which is why it's on the bank at the moment. I'm working on a solution to this at my place....either pontoons for the feeder or a bigger dock. 

Well fed fish don't take bait as eagerly as hungry fish. If I'm having company over, especially kids, I will turn off my feeder a couple of days in advance.


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## JIMS SVT (Aug 19, 2004)

Ive been feedin with the Gamefish chow for a few years. About 3 weeks ago I started throwin some grower 400 out. At first nothing would eat it. Just pick out the gfc. Now if I throw out the grower400 only the bluegills eat.Maybe a grass carp. But the cats seem to not like it at all. I dont get it.


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## die4irish (Jun 8, 2004)

my cats eat anything i throw out there.


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## [email protected] (Dec 22, 2006)

It may just be a size thing. The 400 is pretty small compared to the smallest pellets in the GFC. The 400 doesn't float as well as GFC either so they may be eating it as it falls. Have you tried 500 or 600? They float like GFC and are of similar size.


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## Salmonid (Apr 14, 2004)

I am in the same boat, i been feeding GFC for the last 3 years and this spring started with the AM 400 and while the fish would eat it, it was obvious the small size was making i difficult for the bigger cats and HSB to get enough to make it worthwhile, I now have mixed the 400 with the GFC and they really seem to hammer that and its obvious watchingt eh cats and hybrids concentrate on the bigger pellets, its been working for me so Ill probably keep mixing them. 

Salmonid


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## [email protected] (Dec 22, 2006)

If you're growing cats, it's more cost effective to feed the lower protein feeds, they'll do great on it. Bluegill, hybrid stripers, and bass do better on the higher protein feeds. My fish were slow to get onto GFC when I switched from the Freedom Feeds pellets but they transistioned to the Aquamax well. Maybe it was because the Aquamax is more similar to the Freedom Feeds trout diet than Gamefish Chow.

I've also been feeding a pellet the size of 400 pretty much since I stocked fish so maybe my fish are just conditioned to it.

Mark: If you like, I can send a bag full of 500 over to you via the wives. This may confirm or eliminate the size issue.


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