I saw a gentleman throwing stones into a pond. When I questioned his actions, he said he was feeding his fish. He was serious. He was feeding pebble hard pellets to Koi and assumed that because it was sold as premium food he was doing the right thing. WRONG!

Let's start by asking ourselves where Koi in nature (since the only means of digestion is an intestinal tract and they do not have stomachs) consume this substance? I can't think of any. Can you? Where in nature would a Koi swallow a gritty rough, extremely dry substance to sustain life? Just imagine what damage is taking place on both ends of this equation, not withstanding scarring the intestinal walls. All food should be moistened before feeding if they are hard and dehydrated. Improper digestion of foods can lead to disastrous results.

Let's now ask ourselves exactly what foes into these foods. How are they manufactured? What are the ingredients? Does the label give a realistic picture of contents? Can I feel good about my Koi's diet?

Ingredients are either heated , irradiated, cooked homogenized, hydrogenated, sterilized mummified, fortified, with color enhancers and preservatives added and then packaged. Many manufactures use several of the above processes along with the flattening or rounding or extruding of the ingredients to obtain a uniform shape. All of the above steps destroy most nutrients and add unwanted saturated fats or dangerous carcinogens. The hydrogenation process and preservatives alone bring many negative side effects. When you add vitamin destruction, there really isn't much left. Tossing all of this into a clear container adds insult to injury since light destroys water soluble vitamins. Look to see how many manufacturers package their foods incorrectly.

First consideration should be whether or not ingredients are pharmaceutical grade or animal grade. The former must pass standards for human consumption. The later has standards less strict and imposing. The former takes into consideration purity and negative substances. The later passes on many negative compounds. The manufacturer decides which road to take.

Proper protein (with all amino acids, which are their building blocks), proper lipids (which are fats that must be unsaturated), proper carbohydrates (derived from plant material) and proper fiber (which should be water soluble) must be fundamentally correct if any Koi are to exist or flourish.

An aspect that has not been mentioned is electrolytes. Electrolytes are simply minerals. Minerals are essential for all electrical nerve functions, formation of skeletal material and maintenance of a proper immune system. An imbalance of any mineral leads to negative results. Simply adding minerals to food is not enough. If one mineral is not balanced properly with all the others, a lack of absorption of one or several can occur, and this leads to poor health; even death. Minerals are as essential to life as water. Without food many creatures can exist, but dwindle away over a long period of time. Without water death is guaranteed and without minerals death is also guaranteed.

Unfortunately, the label and complete packaging of the manufactured product receives most of the manufacturer's budget. Yes, the outside costs more that the inside! More time is focused on the look, appeal and image than anything else. One manufacturer can come out with many different labels boosting different results but the contents are basically the same.

They will add selling point remarks on the label such as: fortified with stabilized vitamin C (even though stabilized vitamin C is not absorbed by fish); contains synthetic vitamin E, (except only 20%, if that much, of the synthetic vitamin C is utilized); contains color enhancers, which is fine as long as your fish have red or orange, if they contain any white pigmentation this becomes muted gray and less intense. PLEASE READ LABEL CAREFULLY.

What then would be the best approach when purchasing food for Koi. Mix and match. Do not become locked into one company, one food, or one set of ingredients. This assures, no matter what, a balance can be obtained. But, never, never, obtain a food that contains negative substances, e.g. hydrogenated ingredients saturated fats, synthetic substances, high fiber content, unnecessary coloring and preservatives. Remember to moisten foods that are hard and dehydrated. Preventing a problem is easier than fixing one.

If proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and fiber are all correct, then adding vitamins and minerals at our won discretion at the time of feeding assures proper nutritional balance, We spend more time with the technological end of Koi keeping, such as complicated filters, vortexes, oxygenators and bottom drains, then we do with the most important aspect - feeding. Many of us pick up a bowl of Koi food, empty it into a pond on our way to work and never consider what the ramifications are to this simple task. Not only should we maintain the best diet, but we should also watch while they are feeding to inspect closely for unnatural habits. You know your fish. Remember they do communicate! You simply have to know how to "read" them.

Please read labels carefully. Your Koi's future is in your hands. You are what you eat. It's that simple.

FACT: Whether human, bird, dog or fish, the more a food is touched by man, processed by man, and handled by man, the more dangerous, negative and non beneficial it becomes.

FACT: The lower we all eat of the food chain, the healthier we all become.

Web Masters' comment.

I have found a recipe to make your own food. Everybody loves home cooking.

Koi food recipe. By Bill

This is not just a recipe, but also goes into the whys and wherefores of feeding.
The amounts and ingredients are totally variable, and can be adapted to what you have available. All the information, while as accurate as possible will not all apply to every pond, and common sense should be used in interpreting it.

A suggested simple ratio to start with might be as follows.

2 kilos whole* herring, sprats or any other good cheap fish
The waste* from 2 kilos of prawns
Tentacles and waste* from 2 kilos of squid, or 1 kilo whole squid.
1 cup clay
1 table spoonful yeast.
seaweed flour to thicken
(*Always remember, "Guts are good.")

Cook and puree all the fish, squid, prawn heads etc, and mix together with the cod liver oil. Put 1 cupful of the mix back in the processor together with the desired additives. Process this while adding the seaweed flour till the right texture is achieved. Mould into balls, bag and freeze. I don't cook any of the seafood, I slightly freeze it to make it easier to chop up in the food processor. When I use small boned fish, I leave the bones in and grind them up too...more calcium.

There is no need for a winter food and summer food. (ie a carbohydrate rich winter food high in wheat germ, and a higher protein food for the summer.) If it's bad to feed protein in winter, why does "winter food" contain so much protein?
So called summer food can contain as much as 60% carbohydrate.
(If you read the labels on commercial foods, carbohydrate is used as a binder, to hold the food together, fiber is irrelevant, and ash provides minerals. In reasonably hard water, this too may not be important.)

As regards cold water feeding, again, opinion is mixed. Some view it with horror, other view it as sensible to feed if the koi are willing. If you are going to feed at cooler temps, the following should be borne in mind. Make sure your biofiltration is excellent, rather than adequate, and test regularly to ensure that ammonia or nitrite isn't building up. Large females that are building up egg masses are best starved for some of the winter to reduce the risk of their becoming egg bound. However, the usual winter period where they show no interest in food is probably well in excess of this, and the average ponder is unlikely to need to worry about it.

One school of thought says what little carbo koi need, they can make from protein. The other, that carp require 40% of their diet to be carbo.

This apparent divergence can, I believe, be explained by the difference between the diets of wild and pond carp. What carbo wild fish require, they will get from algae, water plants and, an important but often overlooked source, their live food. A lot of live food contains carbohydrate based food in their guts, and this is a source of carbo for a lot of apparently non carbo eating animals.

In a pond, these food sources are mostly absent or reduced to very low levels, and in the case of the live food, often low levels of variety too. If fish in these conditions are simply fed fish derived protein, and nothing else, deficiency diseases and other dietary deficiencies will be a distinct possibility.

Most (not all) pellets contain a high % of carbo, which can reach as high as 50%.
This is usually derived from corn, wheat or soy, none of which can remotely be called part of their natural diet. (There is a brand of pellet that uses algae as binder.) I have no experimental evidence to prove this, but it is my opinion that it is not good to feed koi wheat, corn or soy based carbohydrates. I think that this leads to cloudy water, clogged filters and fat fish, and I would prefer that my fish had, wherever possible, all their carbohydrates from algal sources.

A cynical view would be to point out that carbo is a comparatively cheap energy source compared to the more natural fish oils. These provide energy in addition to being an excellent source of essential oils and vitamins.

In the spring, when the fish start to show an interest in food, conventional wisdom states that they should be fed a carbo rich diet to "awaken" their digestive systems. However, if koi are given the choice between pellet, paste food or a high protein item like prawn tails, I have found that they will start feeding earlier and more aggressively on the prawn tails, and it is not until they have been eating these for a while will they start eating paste. Even then, they prefer paste to pellet.





This recipe is aimed at the average hobbyist, to provide a good all year round food which needs no great variation. It does not claim to be "The Ultimate", or even to be complete, in the sense that it is guaranteed to contain every single element essential for growth. It does try to come close, and it does offer you the opportunity to manipulate and alter the mix. For example, if you add more fish oil to the diet in the autumn, it will give the fish more of a chance to build up valuable energy reserves to see them thru the cold winter months. This paste food is an attempt to give the koi a similar quality and variety of foodstuff as it would find in the wild.

A lot of people make the mistake of transferring observed feeding practices in humans and other mammals to carp. Carp are fish. In the wild they feed all year round on live food; worms, snails, bugs etc., none of which are renowned for having a high level of carbohydrate. This high protein food increases and is supplemented in the summer months when the plants grow and seeds etc are blown or fall into the water. For humans, carbohydrate is a necessity. It provides us with a concentrated source of energy to move us great distances while holding us up against gravity and at the same time keeping us warm. Koi do not need energy to warm themselves like we do, and none under normal circumstances to fight against gravity. A fish swimming normally only uses a fraction of its muscle mass, so even there, its energy expenditure is minimal, and is best supplied by fish oil in the diet.

Don't feed bread and cereal products etc, but where you feed pelleted foods, stick to a good quality pellet food, and feed as much live food as possible. Make sure that wherever you collect live food, especially snails, no slug pellets or other "bug killers" are used. Koi love snails, but you have to crush the shells which is not for the sensitive or squeamish. Small slugs are usually taken with enthusiasm, but the big ones like severed thumbs can be a bit too much for them.

Without a doubt, live food is the best. It is often rich in some of the amino acids and other substances that can be scarce in pelleted food, and this can enable the fish to make better use of the other food you give them. A wider variety of proteins, and hence amino acids, means better use of proteins for growth, and less waste amino acids meaning less ammonia for the filters to deal with. Woodlice, worms, spiders, grubs, centipedes, the list is almost endless. Avoid maggots, mealworms, millipedes and adult beetles, and it is wise to crush the "head" of anything like spiders or beetle grubs which could bite the fish's mouth, and possibly put it off these valuable foodstuffs. Live freshwater foods should be avoided due to the risk of transferring parasites. Remember that some parasites are not removed by washing and cleaning, but are embedded in cysts deep in the tissues where they wait for their host to be eaten.

Dried insects can be bought from bird food suppliers as an excellent dietary supplement, and while I dislike feeding maggots, the pupae are a nutritious and valuable ingredient.

Vegetable food. As the water gets warmer, the fish can start to get interested in plant based foods. Soft lettuces floated upside down will give them something to chew on, and sliced oranges and grapefruit are often recommended. Some types of lettuces are better than others. If they aren't interested in sliced citrus fruit, you can mix some juice into the day's paste food, and if that makes it sloppy, add a little more "flour" to restore the texture. (Or you can just add vitamin C powder to each day's food.)

Animal proteins. Stick to seafood. It is very unwise to feed proteins from terrestrial animals, eg chicken, beef, pork lamb etc. The reason for this is fat.
Fat and oils are both lipids, and fish need lipids. Seafood contains oils, ie those lipids that are liquid at coldwater temperatures, while meat contains fat, those lipids that are solid at room temperature. A koi that eats meat proteins will also be eating some fat. This can get laid down as fatty deposits, which the fish will not be able to digest, and this can result in the degeneration of certain organs. Never forget that carp are dustbin fish. They will eat anything and everything, a fact recognized by carp fishermen who achieve success with baits made up of everything from custard to cat food. The great Isaac Walton even gave a recipe for carp bait that ignored cat food, but was rather made from meat of the cats themselves. No carp is going to turn down any food on the basis that it isn't healthy.

Prawns are a great treat, but pull off the heads. 3 reasons; they have a sharp spike, (the rostrum), they make mess in the water and the carapaces get spat out and lie on the bottom. Save the heads for the recipe. Cut the prawn tails up and feed all year round, especially in the winter AS LONG AS THEY WILL TAKE THEM. Don't give them the washed out shell less prawns from the freezer cabinet. They really need prime protein and oil, and shell on prawns provide this. (Note. Do not thaw them aggressively with hot water, as this will drive the oils out of the prawn tissues, which is a waste). Plus, you help to keep the filter fed, so you won't have so many problems in the spring. NOTE. If the temperature drops too low, your biofilter may not process ammonia etc so quickly, so monitor water quality carefully if you feed at low temps, both in autumn and spring. Other primo snacks are mussels, cockles, and any other seafood (not freshwater - parasites) they enjoy.

The main ingredients here only cost a few pounds a kilo, and the protein content is very high. Prawns are £5 a kilo, and seem expensive, but if you work out what you are actually paying per kilo for the small percentage of fish protein and oil in the pelleted food, then by comparison, prawns are pretty cheap. Especially if you eat the tails and use the shell waste and heads! It should be noted that what is conventionally treated as waste, is actually the most valuable. The heads and shells of prawns, and the guts and internal organs of fish, squid etc are very valuable food sources, and should never be discarded.

To prepare the paste food, always use a reasonably large food processor ( A blender doesn't really have the required oomph, though having one to hand is useful for some of the later stages.) Fill it with the prawn waste and process till smooth, adding the cod-liver oil at this stage . Obviously you can use whole prawns, shrimp, or lobster or crab waste. Lobster waste is very high in coloring agents, and crab is especially popular, while its shell waste is high in minerals.

I have a square stainless steel pestle and mortar which I smash up the crab legs, waste and shells to splinters. When using crab, I then put the mush into a blender and then sieve it to remove any larger shell fragments which get another pounding and blending.

When you are processing crab shell especially, it can be hard to puree. If necessary add the juice from cooking the squid or fish to help turn it into a smooth paste, as that's better than adding plain water. If you are using a whole crab in the recipe, choose a female crab, as they have more brown meat, which I feel (no scientific basis here) contains more useful oils, amino acids etc. than does white meat.

The herrings, sprats etc can also be cooked and the whole fish processed to a puree. (It does mean that some of the larger bones will get through the processing intact, but usually these can be felt and removed as you roll out the food into small balls with your fingers as you feed the fish.) Mix this with all the other processed prawn heads etc, to make a basic protein paste.

There are a number of additives suggested, eg clay, Spirullina, laver (algae again), propolis,/royal jelly and yeast. Any clay used should be good quality bentonite clay suitable for fish. Amounts that are small, or delicate materials like royal jelly can be added to the finished paste just before feeding. Yeast is an interesting ingredient. Some pelleted foods use derivatives of yeast which have a good reputation for improving health, and including yeast in the mix could reduce the need to add vitamin B. Vitamins should be added to the food on the day of feeding.

If you wish, you can buy herring roes by the kilo to add to the mix. Always use the widest variety of seafood to mimic the diet of a wild carp, which includes annelids, mollusks, fish and arthropods and everything else that moves. Crabs prawns and anything else with legs and a hard outer covering will do as arthropods, shellfish and squid are mollusks, and the annelids (worms) you can dig up in the garden and feed to the fish direct. If you buy shellfish in the shell, (e.g. mussels) there is no reason why the shells should not be crushed up very fine and added to the mix. Squid is an excellent addition, and I would use a decent amount in the recipe. Oily fish are a valuable source of protein and oil. Fish oils are the single best source of energy for your fish, so be sure that you add enough cod liver oil to the mix. Conventional pellet food often contains less than 5%, and pellets for fish raised for the table are sometimes as high as 12 %. You will have to work out what amount of oil works best.

Now you need to thicken it. Conventionally, wheat, corn and/or soy flour is used to thicken and bind foods, both paste and pellet. One of the aims of this recipe is to remove all unnecessary wheat, corn and soy carbo from the diet, and boost the algal content. It has been found that seaweed, ground to a fine flour is an excellent substitute for wheat flour. You can buy seaweed from animal feed stores, it's used as a supplement to horse feed, and I feel that this could in addition be a useful source of trace elements. There is another reason for being generous with algae. A fish protein only diet can be deficient in certain amino acids, especially methionine and cytosine. When this is so, a large percentage of the protein is unusable, which means the waste amino acids are burned for energy, and higher levels of ammonia are excreted into the pond. A generous proportion of algae in the diet means the fish will use more of the food, get better growth and produce less waste.

The seaweed does need to be as fine as flour. Too coarse, and the food will be friable, and break up in the water, which is both messy and wasteful. Really fine seaweed flour gives the paste an excellent texture, rather like plasticine. It's easy to shape into balls for feeding, and holds together well in the water.

Fit the pastry blade in the food processor and put about a cupful of the basic protein paste mix in. (Too much and it won't mix easily.) Add the required additives and blend to an even paste before adding the seaweed flour, a spoonful at a time and blending till it is thick enough. It only needs to be thick enough so it doesn't stick to your fingers. Take it out, roll it into a ball and freeze in a plastic bag. Make the balls sensible sizes, enough for one day's feeding at a time. You need to reach a compromise with the amount of flour Too much makes it a bit dense and crumbly, and too little will leave half of it stuck to your fingers. In the freezer, the mix may become more dense, so try and allow for this. It is easy enough to add more flour if it is too sticky, and a little basic paste mix if too dry.

When I wish to add vitamins, I take a thawed ball of paste, crush a vitamin B tablet, mix it with some vitamin C powder and knead this into the paste food. Obviously you can add other vitamins as required, or delicate additives such as royal jelly. Most of the vitamins are covered by the cod liver oil. I add vitamin B about once a week, and vitamin C most days. It may not be necessary to add vitamin B so much if there is a generous portion of yeast in the mix. Being water soluble, vitamin C is not stored in the body, and needs to be topped up continually. Keep the thawed paste food in the fridge, and only take off what you need for each feed.

You should ideally store the food in a cool, dark place when it is not being used, as light and warmth can degrade some of the ingredients. This is especially important when adding vitamins. Do bear in mind that this is an extremely rich food. If your koi are couch potatoes, and you shovel this down their throats, you may end up with fat fish. If you can return the water to the pond to give them a good current to swim against, the exercise will help to keep them in good shape.

Bon appetite, Bill.

PS

Imagine that the proteins you feed your koi are strings of beads (amino acids). Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, black and white. The koi have to take these strings of beads, break them into individual beads and then make bracelets (koi proteins). These koi bracelets have to have five beads each of red, orange, yellow, and green, but only one blue bead, and no black or white beads. You cannot make a bracelet until you have all the necessary beads, and you cannot start a bracelet until the last one is finished. At the end of each day, when you have made all the bracelets you can with the beads you have, you have to burn all the unused beads (to generate energy) and pile up the ash (fat).

Plant proteins have a lot of red, some orange and a few yellows, and lots and lots of black and white beads. Fish proteins have lots and lots of red, orange and yellows, a lot of greens and a few blues. As you can imagine, plant proteins give a lot of ash, but so will fish proteins if there are not many blues, as blue is the controlling color. It is therefore doubly useful, if you can add blue in any number. Not only do you use much more of the other colors, but at the end of the day, there are less to burn to give ash (fat) In fact, if you cut out the plant proteins, and gave the right number of blues, you could seriously reduce the wasteful process of "burning" amino acids to lay down as fat.

Feeding koi live foods such as invertebrates, etc, has been observed to cause growth out of all proportion to the amount fed. You may think that a handful of bugs every now and again is not all that valuable, and not worth the trouble. However, it is analogous to throwing the bracelet maker a handful of bluebeads.

Home made Med food

I bought the Oxolium/Oxolinic Acid from a local Koi Dealer in NJ for $14.99 - good price. The brand I have - dosage on back is 1 tsp per 25 gallons. I called them and they have in stock and ship next day. B&M Aquatic Gardens & Koi Center in Hamburg, NJ (973) 209-1185.
Also from Argent Lbs on links page