Floating fish feed Vs Sinking fish feed.
Findings show that there is no significant difference in growth performance of clarias gariepinus fed with either sinking pellet or floating feed. (Google is our friend)
As a practising fish farmer and a researcher who has obtained similar result before, I can't agree less with the result from these findings because of the reason highlighted below:
1. It is not weither the feed float or not that grow the fish but the nutrients inherent in the feed. In other words, floating feed is not better than sinking pellet nutritionally vis a vis.
2. There are some ingredients (grains ) that might need cooking before they can be biologically available for fish and extruders (floating feed making machines) operate with high temperature and pressure, therefore such ingredients are cooked through extruding process. Also, a good sinking feed pelleting set up should as well has a steamer to attain this cooking process. Meanwhile, an on-farm feed producer may try to avoid the cooking process by substituting grain with another energy giving ingredient which doesn't require much it for it to be available. (biscuits by product), we should not forget that pelletizer also generate certain amount of heat, though might not be enough to cook grain well. Therefore, cooking ability of extruding machine doesn't make it better than a good sinking feed set up.
3. The belief that fish consume more of floating than sinking cannot be established empirically cos floatability doesn't determine the palatability and acceptability of feed. However, fish may eat more volume of floating feed than sinking cos a single pellet of sinking feed is far heavier than a single floating feed of the same volume. So, fish eat more of floating in volume not in weight.
4. If sinking pellet is made properly and fed by a well experienced farmer, it doesn't pollute water more than what floating will do.
5. Dust formation is highly reduced when feed is properly produced with good formulation having a certain percentage of binder.
6. A well trained stock of fish will pick all the feed be it sinking or pellet irrespective of where the feed meets them, be it on top of the water or water bottom. Any floating feed the fish doesn't consume at about 10minutes after it is fed is as useless as the sinking pellet that goes down which fish refused to pick as a result of reaching satiation already.
7. Fish will certainly pick feed at the pond bottom if the feed is acceptable to them.
Advantages of floating feed.
1. It is made from high tech technology, hence its floatability.
2.It automatically cooked ingredients.
3.It makes feed float and this help bring fish to a close observation with the farmers, especially inexperienced farmers or those who don't know how to feed pellet.
4.It can be easily used by the beginners as compare to the sinking.
Advantages of sinking feed.
1. It is comparatively cheaper.
2. It is not ingredients selective, that is not all formulation can be made float by the extruders but sinking doesn't select ingredients.
3.It gives better economic yields.
4. It doesn't contain fat more than necessary.
In conclusion, there are more than enough empirical evidences to show that a good sinking feed performs as much as a good floating does. If the supposedly best floating feed is made into pellet, its going to give same result as when it is in floating form. The fact that, pelleting machine is not ingredients specific, it gives us the opportunity to select ingredients that are cheaply available in our areas without compromising the finished product quality.
Pls note: Both the floating and sinking feed in this write up are assumed to have everything in common except the production methods.
Thanks for reading!
Sam-Abiodun, Olakunle.
Sources
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