i buy rise fish food from agway.it is alot cheaper than anything on the market.i have been using it for years.i go thru about 150 lbs a year.

Thanks Joe, My koi are getting so big and going through a lot of food a week. I was wondering about the feed Store fish food as I can get it in 50lb bags and help save a little $ also.

"I was wondering about the feed Store fish food as I can get it in 50lb bags and help save a little $ also."

Teri- that's the exact reason why I started to use catfish food sometime ago- I have been using it for 2 years now. I can't see any difference in consumption- the koi eat it as rapaciously as they do the koi food- and it costs $20 for a 50lb bag vs $30 for a 3lb bag of koi food.

Sometimes, I will buy the koi food (end of season markdowns, usually) and mix in with the catfish food- usually a 3 to 1 ratio with 3 parts c/f food to 1 part koi food.

Thanks bwalters ...Here there is only one place that sell koi food and thats Wal-mart 5.5lb bag is $12.00 they only have it in the small pellets. Buying it on line time you pay for the shipping it cost way to much. One of the feed stores here has it 50lb bag for $17.00

That sounds about right; I bought it here at a feed store for $17, but that one has about 30% of the food sink to the bottom of the pond; the slightly more expensive one that I referred to earlier has 100% of the pellets float.

I'll have to check into the 100% as the bag hubby picked up today had on the side of the package 32% floating didnt know we had a choice....Thanks

as stated above, i buy the rise from agway,it sells for 30$/50 lb.bag.it all floats.check the ingredients on the catfish food,i heard some bad things about feeding them to koi.

What have you heard, Joe?

First of all I am not a veterinarian nor am I an expert on nutrition for fish. But I have tried to grapple with what I want in a fish food. What follows is a bit of logic that applies to my situation as well as information that I picked up from a few internet sources. Unfortunately the information is not peer-reviewed literature and does reflect a bit of a bias depending on where it is coming from. Furthermore, over the years Ive lost a few websites that had great information but which are no longer available (I now print them out as pdf files and store them!). For these reasons IÂve listed the articles as pdf files which you can download (or not) and then save them (or not) rather than rely on the website being active over the next few days/weeks/months. Having said all of that....I believe that there are a few kernels of information in the articles despite the bias so read them accordingly.

I am not interested in paying $$$$ for fish food. My New England DNA will not allow that! There are folks out there who are..."Koi Afficionados", who have show quality Koi and who strongly believe in only buying food imported from supplier XXX located in some little hamlet in Japan. ThatÂs fine but IÂm not one of them.
1. I want my fish to be healthy and have a normal/expected growth as well as reasonable color development.
2. I want to know that the food I am feeding them is reasonably fresh; I want to know the "milled-by-date". I would also like to have a reasonable idea of how it was stored prior to shipping it to me.
3. I donÂt want to pay an arm and a leg for it.
4. I would like to have food that has a reasonable level of over-sight in terms of quality control; that has the "right stuff" in it so that I donÂt have to worry about liver problems from feeding a too high fat diet or rancid fat or that melamine was somehow added to it to up the protein levels.

Some fish foods are made for the commercial food-fish raising business. It has a different set of properties and objectives than what I wanted. The foods may contain antibiotics, high levels of fat and carbohydrates to help put on weight FAST with minimal health problems for the fish. The objective is to turn out a catfish (or other) filet for the dinner table in minimal time and cost. ItÂs just me but thatÂs not what I intend for my fish. The potential downside is the side effect of fatty deposits and liver issues referred to in one or two of the articles.

For many years I worked with animals in my labs (and no, none of them were fish!). About the only thing that is relevant is/was that we were hammered again and again about only keeping food around for up to 90 days after the milled-by-date. This was a legal requirement set by NIH. I donÂt want a fish food that has spent an unknown time on some ship and/or warehouse, stored in high temperature conditions. Many of the Koi foods do not provide you with information as to when it was manufactured and you will certainly not know how it was stored. I prefer to buy directly from a manufacturer that is in the business of storing and keeping animal food plus when it is shipped to you it contains all of the milled-by-date and other information. That way I know IÂm getting the freshest food, that (with the exception of the carrier for 2-3 days shipping) the supplier hasnÂt stored it in an uncooled warehouse somewhere in southern California for some months. Even though many of the typical Hakari or other makes of Koi food have been flushed with nitrogen to reduce some of the problems related to shelf-life itÂs still not the same as something that was manufactured within say one or two months of shipping,IMO. You should note that the one article refers to a shelf life (I suspect it is a maximum) of nine months.

I want food that has a high "gobble" factor! You always read the directions: "do not feed more food than your fish will eat in five minutes. Remove uneaten food...etc." I have four Koi (biggest is now about 26 inches, about 8 years old) and approximately two dozen comets. The fish are within the normal growth parameters given that everybody essentially shuts down during the winter months and are only actively feeding from about April to end of October. The gold fish are very bright red/orange. I purchase a 20 pound bag of the ogata (thatÂs the large, floating pellet size) Mazuri Platinum Koi food. One cup of food is gone in under 45 seconds. The smallest of the gold fish cannot swallow them but will clean up the particles that pass from the gills of the big guys when they swallow and grind up 4-5 pellets at a time. IÂve tried Hakari - regular and gold, Misty Mountain Koi food (not sure theyÂre even in business), Blue Ridge Fish Farm, Wardley, Tetra Pond to name a few. I settled on the above since you can buy directly from the company - which I do every Spring. In the fall I switch over to the low-temperature diet but I only buy a few pounds of it.

There were other websites out there that tell you how to make your own food, other viewpoints. But, as I stated above, unfortunately they no longer seem to be around. Oh well. This is just one view point. Hope it helps.
ÂDavid
Article on shelf life for fishfood

Article on corn and fat in fishfood

Oops! Dropped one article
---David

Article on fish food ingredients

drh1 said it all.the rise food has the date on the bag.

Thanks for all the info.........Teresa :o)

Corn content - somewhser, may hve been here, i remember a comment about Koi not being able to digest corn and to be csreful and that catfish food had a hight corn content - I maybe worng as I have not had any catfish food. I just bought a bag of Mazuri Premium food, but it does not list any ingredients - just date of manufacture.

McKool, Mazuri Premium lists their ingredients on their website for any of the feed stocks (see URL below...you will have to navigate out to the specific product; the web page is set up somewhat funny and doesn't let you jump right to a link). As to the corn issue..read the article(s) I attached (I forget which one talks about the corn issue). While it is written by a person affiliated with Mazuri I believe that they have the credentials to know what they are talking about. The only time I've seen comments about "corn" in the feed is on the high-end Koi websites but those folks will stick up their noses unless the food is imported from Japan. Not seen any data from any veterinarian or fish nutritionist or published scientific paper that indicates that corn is a problem ... doesn't mean it doesn't exist but I have my own suspicions about the validity of the argument. Hope this helps.
---David

We feed our fish rise. a 50lb bag is now about 24.00 at agway...we have been feeding them rise for 9 of the 11 years we have had fish. They are thriving. In 11 years we only have had one fish loss...We also feed the earth worn for our worm farm, they go crazy for earth worms. We hand feed the worms because we have 3 orfs and they are so quick, that the koi would never get their fair share.

Joe09, how big is your pond? and how many fish?
that's a lot of fish food. We don't use the whole 50 lb bag in a season...and have lots of big fish.

we have big koi, but not expensive koi, but to us they are priceless...

{{gwi:188843}}

David Thanks - if the "KOI PEOPLE" had police powers - I'd be in a European castle torture chamber, but I did hear the corn isuue a couple of times. We've lost 2 KOI but not due to food issues. I'll most likely stay with the Mazuri.

wonder where else you can get a bag of fish rise? We dont have agway never had heard of this store before did a search and found it on the internet did the search for one around Oklahoma and there wasnt one guess that is why I had never heard of agway lol.........Teresa

I too have been feeding my 2 foot + Koi the cheap stuff for 10 years and they get bigger and bigger every year. Only lost one big female a few years ago because she was egg bound and never laid them. I also give my Koi corn on the cob all the time and no problems . Boy can they suck the kennels off of that cob in a day.

just want to add one thing to this I buy koi found from a well now dealer we are friends now he told me that i can buy my food from a feed story like him he told me mills sell's a good food not found it around here but purina thas a good food argu max 400 and 500 under 30.00 good starter food also zeigler has a good koi food cheap

Great point made about the shelf life of fish food. I feed Hikari and treats. I feel bad as I have one Koi who had issues in the past that I believe could be from poor nutrition.

Anyways....another point I would like to bring out is to consider your temperature zone when planning the nutrition of your fish. In zone 5 my outdoor Koi will spend at least 5 to 6 months fasting. So I need to use nutritious food to build them some fat, and keep them in good health going in to winter. I think ponders in zones that can feed longer most likely can be a little more flexible.

Regards,
Lisa