Updated alternate food for koi and Goldfish

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Weve been rearching this for a while now and have finally update our Alternate food for koi and goldfish thread weve added vitamins protiens etc to the list to help you when feedng your fish know just what goodness these alternate food contain plus added one or more food sources .....
Imagine yourself as a koi in your owners pond although your onto a good thing, food though good must get pretty boring.
After a while you remember back to your ancestors distant past and the many wonderful things you used to eat, feel, taste, smell", I mean real food you can't beat it can you.it's better than those pellets things our owner drops in your pond.
Well for all our koi keeping career Val and I have tried to put ourselves into the koi's shoes so to speak look to their wild ancestors and modern day cousins, so
we started to look at feeding them differently, interestingly.
We all eat, our food has differing tastes some sweet some bitter, it has differing textures fibrous mushy crunchy soft , well this got us to thinking about those hard pellets we feed our koi each and everyday, day in day out and thought hey this must get pretty boring so we set about correcting that.
We remembered from our library of books that koi in the old days in Japan used to get leftover's fed to them by their owners, so we though why not experiment and compile a list of alternate foodstuffs that our koi can "feel, taste, smell and enjoy".
This we broke into three categories Frozen foods, Live foods and Household/Garden foods.....
Then we looked into texture and taste colouration vitamin's proteins and carbohydrates etc.
We set about scouring our extensive library of fish books (not just koi) and after a while we had a list of things that we could potentially feed our koi we could feed our koi giving them texture, taste smell and feel .
Next we decided to experiment with these foods, it turned out our koi had an educated palate, some foods were ignored by our koi, some eaten with relish we found that after a while we were able to par down the list we had compiled until we are left with the one we have today.
Now we are in no way suggesting that koi should be fed these foods 24/7 as that would be wrong but what we do suggest is you feed them to your koi as a treat alternating between pellet to live, pellet to frozen , pellet to house hold/garden so that your koi can enjoy a well balanced enjoyable diet and move away from that hard pellet diet we all feed them , in doing so we found our koi responded in kind colour lustre and body shape responded theirs had become more a more well balanced diet natural so to speak.

Please feel free to use the list compiled bellow as part of your koi's diet weve listed where we can vitamin's proteins and carbohydrates, you may wish to use this list as a template for your own koi's feed regime maybe even add your own foods to the list

Frozen:


Cockles,(Proteins)
Mussels. (cheaper to buy mussels fit for Human consumption rather than from fish shops).Farmers Market food outlets in UK, (proteins).
Prawn (raw) absolutely brilliant with the Hi (red) in koi Farmers Market food outlets UK , (proteins).
Mixed seafood as above Farmers Market Food outlets UK (Proteins).
Fish Row (buy in Super market), (Proteins).
Whitebait. (Buy in fishing tackle/bait shop), (Proteins).
Sea fish chopped into small bits (never feed freshwater fish to fresh water fish),(buy in fish mongers/Super market), (Proteins)..
Slivers of beef, heart, Liver (proteins). ( Pyridoxine B6). Vitamin B12, Riboflavin B2. Nicotinic Acid)
Slivers of chicken, liver (proteins), ( Pyridoxine B6). Vitamin B12, Riboflavin B2, Nicotinic Acid)
Bloodworm. (Tropical fish outlet), (Proteins)

Live foods:

Worms (purge first) can be dug up from a compost heap crop once every two months, (organic only) or bought at fishing tackle/bait shop.( natural proteins and trace elements)
Woodlice/Pillbugs,place half rotted wood in damp areas of garden crop every few months.these are in effect little balls natural proteins and trace elements , good for scales and colouration, (Proteins and Trace elements).
Crickets.Keeps you fit catching them (proteins and trace elements ).
Mysis Shrimps for those who live near the coast you can trawl for these with a fine mesh net freeze in freezer break chunks off to feed good for colouration.
River shrimp tropical outlets (they really cause your koi to work for their food these do)...... scales and colouration.
Flying ants (place jam jar over nest exit when they swarm) Mid summer, natural protein.
Wax Worm.
Mealy Worm both sizes. scales and colouration.
Maggots.(pond only)as the fish pass the skins and can block uptakes in tank.( Proteins and trace elements)
Daphnia.
Brine Shrimp cultivate eggs in bottle with air stone salty water.
Water Flea.
Glass Worm (adult fish only may attack fry).
Caterpillars Smooth Skinned, the green answer to stopping them eating your garden cabbages and lettuce (Proteins and trace elements) .
Note:- do not feed hairy caterpillars or highly colourful smooth ones to fish as they are poisonous.
Mosquito and Gnat larvae leave, a bucket out with water in it they well soon lay in there.
Cyclops (adult fish only).
Tubifex (make sure they are rinsed well under running water).Note we are seeing less of this in fish outlets because of its sewerage origins.
Any freeze dried fish food Krill, shrimp, bloodworm, etc.good for scales and colouration.(proteins).
Dried Silk Worm Pupae (really good at bringing the whites out in koi/ goldfish) buy from koi dealership or order via fish outlet.( Rich in Proteins).

Household foods/Garden (organic only):

Brown Bread/Wheat germ (not white as it contains too much starch)., (Carbohydrates), (Thiamin B1).
Carrot heads (the green leaves Organic only) pond only (Vitamin A).
Lettuce heads (Organic only) pond only. (Vitamin K and Folic Acids)
Pearl Barley (cooked into porridge form, add Montmarillionite clay, leave to cool then break bits off and feed).(Pond fish only). Note:- after adding the clay open the kitchen window as it well and truely stinks and you dont want to go upsetting mum/dad/husband or wife or better still cook in a thermos flask over night doing it the latter got me banned from the kitchen, (Carbohydrates) trace elements .
Orange (cut in half) or slice float on water.(Vitamin C).
Lemon. Slice (Vitamin C).
Grape fruit ( Vitamin C).
Banana (Phosphates, Vitamin C)
Young dandelion leaves (poor mans lettuce). Rich in Iron.(A good source of Vitamin K and Folic Acid)
Cucumber.(Vitamin A)
Propolis (add to pellets it is really good for fish and has anti bacterial properties) buy it from health food store as its cheaper than at koi dealer's price, it comes in either spray form, is good on open wounds such as ulcers on your fish.."Truely a multi use natural product is this".
Water Melon (sliced or scooped into bite size balls) (vitamin C).
Frozen garden peas (shell first).(Vitamin A).
Garlic is Something we discovered koi go completely nuts over (like cats to catnip) it is also very good when mixed with pellets at kick starting a koi who have been refusing to eat back to eating again long before they started putting it in pelleted foods it also has that anti parasite property (vitamin K).
After the winter its a good idea to feed your koi Wheatgerm and Garlic to help your koi through their weakest period as it makes the koi unpalatable to parasites.........
Peanut many years ago people used to feed there koi peanuts but I read somewhere, sometime ago that Peanuts can cause cancer in koi so Peanuts are right out please if your new to koi keeping dont feed these to your koi

Dave
 
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Thanks for these suggestions! I also feel the same old must be boring. I started soaking my pellets till they are a bit soft and then mushing them in my fingers, the fish love it, when I throw the hard ones in that float they just look at me like what are you doing??

I started giving them frozen chopped squid (it comes frozen whole, I chop it into tiny pieces). Is this a bad idea? I don't see it on your list. I give it to them like a dessert, after they eat the pellets, I chop some up and once they see me sit on the deck they get all worked up because they know its coming.

If you think its bad, I'll switch to something else.
 
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Yes there is Priscilla look in the mixed sea food you'll find squid is part of its mix so squid is fine however defrost all frozen alternate feeds first prior to your feeding your koi, and be sure especially in your climate to take out any uneaten pieces after 5 minutes the same with any food but please remember these are treats not to be fed over a prolonged period say once a week with another alternate in the middle of the week .:)
Remember that Pellets are sprcially formulated for our koi's every need from Protien to Vitamins prebiotics and probiotics which should be the main bulk of your feeds.:cool:
What Pellets are you feeding at he moment ?(y)

Dave;)
 
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My husband picked up a bag of color enhancing tetra brand. We have some of the big brand pellets here. We are almost out. I know they have a growth formula and the color enhancing. Which do you think is better?

I use the squid as a dessert treat. I feed the pellets first. I use the squid as a treat about twice a week. Believe me, between the koi, goldfish, platy and tilapia, there isn't a morsel left! Whatever is too small for the bigger fish the platys pick it up. I normally just cut off about an inch of frozen squid and dice it up, so its not a lot, just dessert. Like all great desserts, always leave them wanting more. Lol!

Might try an orange today. I have tried kale, they ignored it.

We have a local fruit here, nesberry, it grows in a tree over their pond. The parrots come by and eat half of one and drop the other half in the pond (talk about your symbiotic relationships! LOL!) The koi absolutely LOVE these fruit! I love them too. They look like a kiwi, but are brown inside and so sweet, like a spoon of sugar. The skin it eatable, but I don't like to eat it, and neither do they. They somehow hollow it out perfectly.

I also have papaya growing in my garden and was considering letting them try that. Local, organic, farm to pond! Lol!

Thoughts?
 
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Sorry Priscilla I dont really know about these fruits your mentoning so be carefull they dont poison your fish.
Both pelleted foods go hand in hand what we normally do is mix the two and keep the mix in a large sealable plastic conntainer , this is to keep your pellets fresh and the vitamins pre and proniotics etc as fresh as possible, also keep your continer in a cool dark place away from sunlight (y)
At the moment we are feeding ours a mix of Wheatgerm and garlic pklus Queni koi Japanese mix which we will fiid until the summer months , then we will buy 5 kg of Queni koi Ultimate food very high in protein and the Japanese mix until late into what would be your fall swoppng back to the wheatgerm and garlic at that time until the pond temperature hits 10c , then stop feeding until the spring.
However in the tropics you dont have to stop and just carry on as normal
I hope this helps ?

Dave(y)
 
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They are local organic healthy fruits, that humans would consume. Why do you think they would be poisonous to fish? Just wondering. I obviously wouldn't give my fish anything I thought would hurt them. My thinking is if I would eat the fruit or vegetable, so can a fish.
 

Mmathis

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I recently experimented with making gel foods and my goldies LOVE it! If I do it again, maybe instead of mixing all the ingredients together into one big batch, I can come up with a "base" mixture (of course, including the gelatin). I can take that base, divide it into several smaller portions and mix something different into each mini-batch. I love experimenting!
 
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Buy purging them your taking out impurities from the worm , simply leave them in a closed container with smakk air holes and some grass for 24 hours

Dave
 

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