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  • From: georg parlow <g.parlow@gmx.at>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Homemade fish food (was:Aquaponics: artificial?)
  • Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2014 21:12:54 +0100

What kind of fish are you feeding? How did you come of with this system

Last season I had common carp in it's wild form http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cyprinus_carpio_1879.jpg - not so fat as the variety usually bred in aquaculture http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Spiegelkarpfen.jpg&filetimestamp=20070513134009&; - and very tasty! I suppose this is partly due to the fact, that in the aquaponic tank they are in a highly oxigenated environment, whereas usual pond culture is a lot less aerobic, which leads to the common 'pond smell' of the pond, and subsequently to the 'pond taste' of the fish.

How I came up with this system? Well, I was fascinated by chinampas and similar systems ever since my PDC in 1988 - and when I got the chance I read up on it on the www and then exactly one year ago I started my experiments.

Much more sustainable than farmed fish using
wild caught fish food.

I think it is sick to feed farmed fish food made from wild caught fish.

how are you making the pellets (pelletizing machines tend to be rather
large scale, finicky things).

For small scale pellet production you could take Georg's ingredients, mix
them with some kind of binder
to make a dough then run them through a hand crank meat grinder with large
screen.

Just like that, or almost. I do not use a binder, but the spelt flour is the binder.


Have two people do it, one turns the crank, the other takes a knife
and slices the "worms" off as they emerge and puts them on a tray to dry in
the sun before feeding.


Obvious thinking, this is how I started, but for me it works a bit different. When slicing the 'worms' of the meat mincer, the tend to stick together a lot more. It is best if I let them come out approx 12 or 15 cm, then gently break the bunch off by letting it rest on my hand and sorta wiggle the bunch off. Also if they are so much longer they are very easy to separate onto the drying board (I kinda shake- drop them out of my loosly cupped hands). A day or two (depends on air humidity) later, the 'worms' can easily be crumbled up to make nice pellet size. The mix makes the diff - if too much grainflour, they get too hard, like dry noodles. And I gave up sundrying, as they go rancid very quick in sunlight - if kept in the well ventilated shade they last for weeks and weeks.

To find that out I was playing around with different mixes, for the thing is: if the mix is too gluey, the 'worms' stick together and it is a mess. If the dough is too dry, you do not end up with worms but crumbles. Here is my recipe:

2000 g ground sesame oil press cake
370 g whole meal flour
40 g rockdust
1300 to 1350 g water (might be a little different with other press cake - but the first few months I didn't measure and write down proportions, I was inventing the mix every time new, until I realized that developing a recipe has some advantage in this particular case - for as a cook i can't stand following a recipe)

Mix everything well, and do not be discouraged if the mix appears too dry - just grab a handful and squeez it into a ball - if it sticks together you are set. Otherwise you will regret it later on.

Upcoming season I plan to try Clarias gariepinus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarias_gariepinus - they are said to reach plate size in 3 to 5 months, and are really greedy gobblers. After week 20 I might be feeding 10 kg a day. So I am pondering the purchase of an electric meat mincer, or else I will spend most of my day producing fish food :)

Hope this was helpful.
Georg




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