Fish Feed Trial over 12 Months - Outcomes.

FISH FEED TRIALS.

A report on the Fish Feed feed trials, they were very successful. 

The method we employed was as follows. We had two fish tanks in an Indy 23 system and the fish tanks were both part of the same system and they shared the same water for the system. We placed 60 fingerling fish into each tank. Both tanks were populated with Jade Perch an Australian Native freshwater species. 

We fed one tank on standard commercially available 38% protein fish feed pellets, the other tank of fish was fed on all sorts of vegetable matter. We found that they would eat almost anything vegetable. Jade Perch, are vegetarian by nature and they are a fish lust like Tilapia in that regard. 

The fish in the second tank were fed strictly only on plant material.
 
 We found that they would eat pumpkin slightly cooked, so it was just a little bit soft, not as soft as you might cook pumpkin for human consumption. Just drop it into the tank, and it would sink to the bottom. In the morning all that is left over is the hard pumpkin shell stripped clean. They would eat avocado in the same way. They love avocados. 

They will also eat alfalfa which we call Lucerne here in Australia. The lucerne (alfalfa) has to be nice and green and fresh of course, for them to eat it. Not dried out. The Jade Perch will readily eat things like moringa tree leaves which are evidently very high-value food for fish.
 They also enjoy all manner of leafy greens such as lettuce, spinach and Swiss chard. 

At about the six-month mark, we started a juicing programme using leafy greens, carrots, tomatoes, peppers and the like from the Aquaponics gardens. We would prepare vegetable juice every day and keep the pressings from the juicing machine. We mixed the vegetable pressings with some eggs and wholemeal flour. The eggs were from our own chickens. These ingredients would be made into a dough-like paste mixed into a nice stiff paste and then put in a baking tray thinned out to around 25mm thick, and then bake that mixture into biscuits. The biscuits, when finished baking, would be allowed to cool and then be put into the freezer for preservation. 

The biscuits would be fed to the fish on a demand basis every day, which became a really good feed regime. They did well on that type of feed and that method enabled us to make a good supply and keep it in the freezer ready for daily use rather than cooking pumpkin or whatever every day. We found from that process it was quite easy to make fish food that Jade perch and Tilapia style fish will eat.
 
Getting to the end of the trial, when the 12 months were up, we conducted a weigh-in of the fish. We took a sample of 20 fish out of the tank that had been fed on standard fish pellets and weighed them, and then we did the same weigh-in for 20 fish out of the other tank that had been fed on the vegetarian rations for the 12 months.
It was found that the fish that had been fed on the vegetarian rations were between 10% and 15% lighter (less in weight) than the fish from the other tank that had been fed on standard fish feed pellets. It was also found that the fish were perfectly healthy. 

Jade Perch as a fish variety tend to have a lot of fat stored in their stomach cavity, and the gut cavity and we found that with the ones fed on the vegetarian diet fatty deposits were quite minimal compared with the ones fed on the high protein diet and I think this bears out the difference between a vegetarian diet in humans and other creatures as well, so the overall result was very promising and very good. 

We need to run another trial for at least 3 months to determine if nutrients produced for plant growth by the fish are similar for both types of feed regimes. 

Conclusion:
 It is very possible to successfully feed Jade Perch on a land-based plant matter diet with good results for the fish.