Tips for making feed pellets for aquarium fish

Compared with natural fish feed, commercial feed pellets for aquarium fish have many more advantages:

First, stable source. Commercial feed pellets can be produced all year aroud while natural feed is limited to seasons.

Second, formulation can be adjusted at any time according to the nutritional requirement of aquarium fish at different growth stage.

Third, a certain amount of medicine can be added to prevent and cure some common fish diseases. In this way, survival rate of fish can be enhanced greatly.

Forth, some biochrome can be added to the fish feed pellets to deepen the color of fish body and the ornamental value will be increased.

Fifth, under high temperature process of fish feed pellet mill,pathogenic bacteria in raw materials can be killed.

When making fish feed pellets, something you should pay attention to:

1.Nutrition
Nutrition and palatability are important indicators of feed quality.Nutrition includes two aspects: growth-promoting and color-deepening. The nutrients content of fish feed pellets should satisfiy the growth requirement of aquarium fish.

2.Palatability
The different smell sended out by feed is significant basis for preliminary identification of the aquarium fish feed pellets. As a general rule, qualified feed pellets send out fishy smell and fragrance.So some phagostimulant can be added to the fish feed pellets to improve the palatability, and aquarium fish will be attracted to take feed pellets actively. At present, some common phagostimulant includs amino acid and mixture, sulfur-containing organics, nucleic acid and extractive from flora and fauna.

3.Stability
Fish feed pellets should be kept not loosen in water so that the nutrition can be saved and fish can take feed successfully . On the other hand, if the feed pellet loosed in water, the water quality will be polluted and then the regular growth of the fish can be affected. As for the waterproof of aquaculture feed pellets, there are usually two methods: one is increasing the material rich in starch, like wheatmeal; the other is adding binder to feed pellets. Now, binders mainly refers to sodium salt or calcuim salt of bentonite, sodium alginate, carboxymethocel, lignosulfonate, semicellulose and so on. Choose a suitable binder, you should not only consider the effect of the binder on the pelletizing, but also the palatability, safety and nutrient content.