A Question About Animal Feeds And Some Observed Results

[BigDon]

Some of you may know I've been raising and breeding fish for going on thirty years and I have some questions about why some of the things I do work like they do.

Hoping to get the attention of Biosci or some of you ranchers out there.

One of the things I'm noted for locally is showing up at the Local fish Store, or LFS on fishkeeping websites, with really beautfully colored goldfish. And aside from the all important keeping their water clean, the reason they look so nice is the food I feed them. Just regular ol' goldfish get really good color after a a few weeks under my care, much less the fancy guys.

and I'm willing to tell you guys what I do if you can tell me why it works so well.

While I won't say I never feed the goldfish "fishfood" the bulk of their diet comes from canned peas. As soon as their little mouths get big enough to take them in entirely that's what makes the bulk of their vegetable diet. Mashing peas to accomadate smaller mouths causes water quality issues so I don't. As for animal protien the local carnicera sells shelled baby clams for a dollar fifty a can. That's cheaper than the peas. They get a tablespoon of those a day too.

A spoonful in a small net, rinsed under the tap and hucked on in is how I prep the peas and the clams. Gotta rinse the packing fluids off. Liquid bacteria food in a fishtank equals bad in most cases.

The remander of the can of either clams or peas is rinsed and layed flat in a ziplock bag in the freezer in a single layer if possible. Then future feedings I just break off a meal sized piece. Don't even have to thaw it, the fish never care.

Now I tried canned corn as a variation and the goldfish grew faster, but their colors only rated as "good" not exceptional. On the pea diet they grew a little slower than the corn fed goldfish but their colors had a breathtaking "depth" to them lacking on the cornfed ones.

Can somebody tell me why this should be?

(And frozen, a single can of peas lasts a month or more. Same with the clams.)

[Jim]

Well, both are good sources of lots of fresh nutrients, which may make them better than the dried fish food. They each have amino acids (proteins), but different ones, so maybe the fish are responding to that difference. Also, peas have beta-carotene, which is supposed to be good for the skin.

You could feed both, alternating. Maybe the fish will grow big and colorful.

[Jeff Root]

Whole canned peas. That's hilarious! Who would guess that?

Jim suggested that the key ingredient might be beta-carotene. Peas have
a variety of different carotenoids, and *that* might be the key. Have you
ever tried deeply-colored carrots? I've seen varieties of carrots with a range
of different colors.

If you want to test, you could also try deeply-colored beets. They have very
little or no carotene, and are instead colored by anthocyanin pigments.

Peas start out high in sugar, but it converts to starch quickly as they age.
Fresh peas are a moderately good source of pectins, gums, hemicellulose,
cellulose, and lignin. Peas are a high-protein food, but are deficient in
tryptophan, methionine, and cystine. They have very little fat and no
cholesterol. They are an excellent source of vitamin A, which comes from
yellow carotenoids hidden under their green chlorophyll pigments. As peas
age, the chlorophyll fades and the yellow shows through. Peas are also a
good source of non-heme iron, the inorganic form of iron found in plants.

Info culled from 'The Complete Book of Food' by Carol Ann Rinzler (1987).

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[HenrikOlsen]

If you want to test, you could also try deeply-colored beets. They have very
little or no carotene, and are instead colored by anthocyanin pigments.

Just be prepared for the sight of a red tank. That beet color gets everywhere!

[trinitree88]

Big Don. The baby clams contain all the essential amino acids plus the benefit of trace nutrients from the seawater. To assimilate amino acids into new protein, you also need B vitamins which are in the clams,too. The others are right about the beta carotene for coloration from the peas. Trace nutrients sometimes get involved in production of coenzymes which make the cells more efficient in their use of food, and it's surprising how little you need. Post WW2 agricultural research turned up a variety of minerals that were deemed necessary for optimal health in livestock and people. At the garden center, years ago, I had picked up a bag of greensand (glauconite), that listed few nutrients in terms of nitrogen, phosphorus or potassium....almost nil. I wondered why somebody would buy the stuff, since it offered little interms of primary nutrients, N,P,K or even secondary nutrients...Mg, Ca, S,..etc. Fortunately it was a quiet day and the salesman happened to be around for Organica, so I asked him. It seems the Federal gov't gets paid a big annual royalty for any plantfood product's listing of nutrients. Greensand was discovered, during the war ,to contribute to large per/acre yields in the Ozark Plateau farmlands despite most of the nitrogen going to bomb making instead of fertilizer. Analysis showed that the trace nutrients in greensand ~ 15 enhanced the photosynthetic capabilities of the plants even in diminished primary nutrient conditions. Post-war, savvy little gardeners should always sprinkle at least a bag of it over their garden site (or use Kelp meal which is similar) so that the soil contains sufficient trace nutrients to produce maximum yields. Manure gives a slightly different trace composition and contains lots more primary nutrients. It's a rationale for humans to eat a wide variety of foods from many countries (soil types) to get similar results.
Without specific analytical knowledge of the entire food diet you're using, it's my suspicion that you're getting a similar result...a trace metal from the clams abetting coenzyme formation that enhances the uptake of beta carotene. Congrats on your hard work paying off. Make some moola from it. pete

p.s. while researching a bit, I came across somebody who fed their fish cooked eggs. I know in Mexico, they like their eggs with deep colored yolks and they feed their chickens marigold blossoms which are high in carotene, to color up the yolks. So if you have a local souce of eggs, ask the farmer to feed them marigolds, cook the eggs and serve in bits to your fish.

SEE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensand

[BigDon]

Thanks for mentioning that Henrik. My mind had already planned the shopping trip as I read Jeff's post. I think I'll pass now.

Another excellent feeding trick, this one for harlequin rasboras, is the red petals of geranium blossums. A week or two of those sprinkled on top of the water and they glow like embers. Very, very nice effect.

I tried that after I read that killifish, and unrelated group, redevelope wild color intensities after being fed red ants. Wind blown ants constituting a major portion of the puddle dwelling fish's diet. (The killis in question come from ephemeral puddles on the Argentine pampas.)

The author had gone so far as to determine that it was the phosphorus content of the exoskeletons of red ants that was contributing to the color enhancing effect and that his studies showed that a lot of fish pigments respond to fresh sources of organic phosphorus and that set the lightbulb off over my own head.

Red ants are a pain in the butt to gather so I went with an easier to wrestle into a fishtank source of phosphorus based pigments. Flower petals! Darned if it didn't work like a charm! (If you do go with the red ants put them in the freezer for a couple hours first. Ants do not go gently into that good night.)

Now fish might hesitate a day or two when presented with novel foods. I've seen that a lot. Even foods they eventually love so much they body check their tankmates to get at. Cichlids and the other more intelligent fish especially. With the flower petals the fish mistook them for their fish flakes initially, backed off, then fell in love with them.

Something that hit me just now. Is there a significant difference in the phosphorus content between peas and corn?

[BigDon]

Thanks Trinitree. You posted while I was typing!

[BioSci]

Is there a significant difference in the phosphorus content between peas and corn?

You can use the USDA nutrient content calculator to get an estimate for most foods.

search for "pea" or "corn" and select for canned & drained to get a table with more information than you can use.

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/

This table just gives raw numbers but does not tell you how important the values are.

I suspect that the carotenoid content of peas (carotene and lutein) are the key to the enhanced color.
Peas and corn together would have "complimentary" amino acid profiles such that using them both would give a more balanced protein diet than either alone. (same with addition of clams).

[Ivan Viehoff]

Salmon aren't pink-fleshed unless they eat pink stuff, chiefly crustaceans in the wild. Natural Baltic salmon isn't pink, because they don't get that food in the Baltic. Farmed salmon, I believe, may be fed food with colouring agents in it to make the flesh pink.

I've also heard that flamingoes don't go nicely pink unless they get the right things to eat. Young flamingoes aren't pink at all. I believe chickens can be fed certain colouring agents to get their yolks dark yellow. I think some of the things that have been used for this in the past are now not allowed in the EC, so European egg yolks are less yellow than they used to be.

So eating the right stuff gets a range of animals, or certain parts thereof, brightly coloured. Since this can be forced artificially, it doesn't necessarily imply that the animals are healthy.

[BigDon]

Ivan, if you know somebody who raises silver arrowannas I discovered you can get them to look like the thousand dollar a foot red asian arrowannas by feeding them dried krill, (the big ones that come in those coffee can sized containers) They take the krill enthusiastically to boot.

[BigDon]

Thanks Biosci.

I compared them but nothing jumped out at me. And peas only have about a third more phosphorus than corn.

Going to have to relook at fish pigmentation again.

Been doing this so long I've forgotten stuff.

[HenrikOlsen]

I've also heard that flamingoes don't go nicely pink unless they get the right things to eat. Young flamingoes aren't pink at all.

In the wild they eat crustaceans which provide them with the color, in captivity coloring may have to be added.
I know that in the Copenhagen Zoo they add paprika to the feed to get them to be pink. It works in the food because birds don't have the receptors to taste capsaicin as hot, so it doesn't make the food spicy for them.

[BigDon]

In the wild they eat crustaceans which provide them with the color, in captivity coloring may have to be added.
I know that in the Copenhagen Zoo they add paprika to the feed to get them to be pink. It works in the food because birds don't have the receptors to taste capsicum as hot, so it doesn't make the food spicy for them.

Only a Northern European would consider paprika picante.

Henrik, how you doing old bean?

My huge swedish friend, "Bigger Don"* had a comedy book his mother gave him that poked fun at Swedish-American cooking and culture and there was a whole chapter entitled "Food That Hurts and Other Foreign Ideas". All about spicey cuisine from a Minnesotan's perpsective

I wish I could remember the exact title of the book. You, as a Dane, would find it hilarious, I'm sure.

Edit To Add: boy, the new rolleyes symbol sure looks fruity.



*Bigger Don is so big and burly that bears come down out of the hills to scratch their backs on him. He's worked so hard his whole life that the tissue normal hard working humans only have on the palms of theirs hands extends all the way to the bend of his elbows. From carrying sheetrock, stacks of rebar and packets of tin can studs.

[HenrikOlsen]

Only a Northern European would consider paprika picante.

I notice I should have written capsaicin instead of capsicum in my post, fixed. The point was that the pelicans wouldn't have been bothered by habaneros either.

When cooking with paprika I tend to go for Hungarian rose-grade which does have a little bite as well as a lot of taste.

Henrik, how you doing old bean?

I'm doing quite fine, just picked 2½ lbs. of black and red currants off my bushes, boiled them for the juice and now I have half of that cooling as jelly after boiling it with sugar and the other half bubbling in a 5 liter jug after boiling it with honey. That will hopefully become good mead over the next couple of months.