Good Time to Buy Food

[razornick]

I defer to the aquaculturist with 20 years experience. Advice has value with those credentials. From my perspective, though, I could not afford my hobby if I had to spend to the level of an optimimum diet (my liner is two plies of discarded freeway billboards). I guess koi are like people. There are the haves, and the have nots. My koi seem happy (they eat from my hand) and make me happy, in turn. Thanks.

 

[koiguy1969]

yes i still feed the summer blends. but not as often.

 

[DoDad]

You've got to know your vendor and trust them.
When I buy say 33# I divided it up into smaller portion and vacuum seal it.
Don't ever freeze it.

 

[koikeepr]

razornick, as I said in my post you don't have to spend a fortune on healthy koi food. You can find certain brands that are perfectly reasonably priced. I am as cheap as they come and am eager to save money, which is why I suggest buying koi food off season when you can get a bargain and save some pennies.

At the end of the day, you can feed your fish whatever you like and they will likely eat it. I try to do right by my pets and feed them what I can best afford. In this economy, I know that it's hard to feed a family nevermind fish. So, we each do our best to offer what we can.

 

[nc0gnet0]

nc0, I can assure you that most typical dog food doesn't have an ingredient list that looks like that. Here is an example of Purina Kitty Chow. This reminds me that animal by-products are also not healthy for koi (nevermind other animals).

Koikeeper.....trust me I know this. I was one of the people that lost a loved pet to the wheat glutten fiasco. Poor little guy was only 4 months old. I was at the time feeding Iams. I have since gone to extremes to insure my kids get nothing but the best, even making my own.

And your right, almost all dogfood is garbage! When razornick posted about feeding his koi dogfood, it just made me wonder how closely the high quality Salmon based dog food's were to quality koi food. The one I posted actually looked pretty darn good, but I don't know about the micro-ingrediants. I feed hikari gold and occasionally koi vibrance.

We can only hope that our hobby does not suffer a fate like the tainted wheat glutten ordeal, but being the skeptic that I am, I would imagine there are even less safeguards in place for koi food that there are for dog food.

 

[stroppy]

i too know of a kitten being very ill on iams kitten food .... but i feed my goldfish tetra pond food but after reading these posts i wonder if im doing wrong by giving them this ?

 

[koikeepr]

it would not shock me if you are right about koi food in terms of the safeguards. Gulp! Hopefully none of us will have to experience that.

The other reason not to feed dog or cat food, is that the protein levels are usually not balanced for a koi either. The average dog food is around 19-26% protein on average. Koi food is 35%-42% depending on what you get. Obviously that is a significant difference. The protein needs for a dog and a fish are different. You can find innumberable reasons not to cross feed foods from one animal to another.

That's not to say people don't do it all the time, of course. I mean, we've seen posts here where people feed their koi bread, as an example. Truly, that is something that adds very little nutritional value for a fish, but I hear about people doing it all the time. To each his own!

 

[nc0gnet0]

I just wonder how much real research has been put into koi food? And are the labels to be even trusted? It may say it has 40% protein, but does it? I ran across a post (on another board) about the disection of a koi that was fed nothing but pond sticks.......the thing looked awfull.

The protein needs for a dog and a fish are different.

Honestly, I really wasn't advocating feeding koi dog food. FWIW the food I did post had a protein level of 37 percent though.

 

[rdk]

I just bought a large amount of Hikari wheat germ fish food. If I open it how long can I keep it before I have to throw it out? I don't have the equipment to vac reseal it. Please let me know. I am only feeding 5 smaller goldfish and I could not find a smaller can. Thank you.

 

[DoDad]

Keep itseale and in a cool dry place.

 

[DrDave]

I save 32 oz Gaterade bottles and when I buy bulk food, I immediately repackage it into these. The food is sealed and stays as fresh as it can be. A 20Lb bag will require about 25 bottles to store it all. I think each one holds about 14 Oz of dry food.

 

[pebcpa]

Thanks Koikeepr!

I did the same thing, ordered a few differtent kinds from Dr's Foster & Smith. They had some really good deals and I use one of your coupon codes for the extra $5.00 off. I acutally used the item numbers (prefix "ARG-") from an older catalog since the prices were good until 12/31 and better than the listed prices on the internet.