Search Catalog

Online Catalog

NEWS

August 31, 2010
Fall 2010 Fish Stocking Info
March 7, 2010
Updated Website
March 7, 2010
2010 Store Hours
more



SecurityMetrics Credit Card Safe


Koi & Goldfish Nutrition

Without proper nutrition you can not have good health. Therefore, we put together this page as a piece of the Koi & Goldfish Health puzzle. Topics include:Koi & Goldfish Health is also highly dependent on disease management, water quality and environmental conditions. Therefore, we have put together a page covering each of these issues. Visit them at the following links:

Nutritional Requirements

Koi and Goldfish are omnivorous, which basically means that they will eat anything they can fit in their mouths. When in the wild or in more natural ponds with lots of algae and mud bottoms, these fish will do very well on their own and require little to no supplemental feeds. However, once they are put in an artificial setting which is filtered to be kept clean and dosed with algaecides to keep the algae at a minimum, many of the natural foods are removed and they become dependent on their keepers for nutrition. In general, it is a good idea to feed Koi and Goldfish a variety of foods to be sure that all required nutrients are accounted for. Most quality feeds on the market are more or less complete and the fish will do well on them, but a vitamin or mineral may be missing or low. Therefore, if you feed multiple diets you stand a better chance of covering all the requirements. This can be done by mixing pellets together or feeding two foods on alternate days. However, for the fish to excel, they should have a variety of foods, including live.

Staple Diets

You can think of a Koi or Goldfish Staple diet as their everyday diet. This is a well balanced affordable diet that will keep your fish healthy and allow them to grow. It should have a protein level of 30 to 35% with one of the top 3 ingredients being fishmeal, shrimp or krill. We offer Keystone Koi Pellets as the everyday diet that we raise our Koi with. It is an exceptional value with a balance that allows it to be fed year round at water temperatures down to 50°F. This feed also includes the color enhancing pigment Spirulina, which makes it the most complete feed that we offer. Hikari offers a Staple Diet that is an economical, daily diet for koi as well as other pond fishes. It contains all the basic nutrition your fish need to live a long and healthy life. High in stabilized vitamin C, this feed promotes resistance to stress and immunity to infectious disease and can be fed at water temperatures down to 60°F. Tetra has its own “Staple” diet, which it calls Pond Sticks. These affordable floating pellets, or mini “sticks” are an ideal maintenance diet that provides nutrition for energy, longevity and overall health. Feed them spring, summer and fall when water temperatures are 60°F and above.

Wheat Germ Diets

Wheat Germ Diets are fed to Koi and Goldfish, particularly when water temperatures drop into the “cool” temperature range of 50°F to 68°F, because they are more easily assimilated than animal proteins. Hikari offers a Wheat-Germ diet that is a highly nutritious, easily assimilated, highly digestible daily diet for Koi and other pond fish, including goldfish. Developed through many years of breeding experience, this highly nutritious diet is extremely effective in cooler climates which experience a winter season. It can be mixed with a staple diet and fed all year long to help your fish look their best while improving their fertility. Tetra Wheat-Germ based feed is their Spring & Fall Diet. Keystone Koi Pellets, the most versatile pellets that we sell, are also considered a Wheat Germ Diet.

Color Enhancing Diets

A technique that many Koi enthusiasts use prior to showing their fish is to put them in a “mud pond” to feed on natural vegetation and organisms, which contain pigments that will enhance and intensify their color. Because not everyone is able to do this, Feed Manufacturers have developed diets that contain these color enhancing pigments. Hikari Gold is a high protein daily diet that increases growth rates in warm water temperatures between 68°F and 86°F, and is supplemented with carotene for outstanding color enhancement and Vitamin C for resistance to stress and infectious disease. Hikari Excel is a premium color enhancing diet that uses pure cultured Spirulina as its color enhancer. This diet is essentially Wheat Germ based making it easy for the fish to digest and assimilate even in cool water temperatures down to 50°F. Feed your Koi Hikari Excel for a month and they will display their best colors! Tetra has a terrific color enhancing diet called Koi Vibrance, which is a highly nutritional diet that also brings out vibrant reds and yellows in Koi and Goldfish. Feed it spring, summer and fall when water temperatures are 60°F and above. Keystone Koi Pellets are the most affordable color enhancing diet being formulated with the color enhancing properties of the natural pigment from the algae Spirulina.

Growth Diets

Nutritionally speaking, rapid growth is not the most important aspect of a Koi diet, but there are many instances where it is desirable to get the fish up to a larger size as quickly as possible. The thing about growth diets is that they can really only be fed during warm water temperatures when the metabolism of the fish is high enough to handle the heavy inputs of protein. Tetra has a diet called Koi Growth that is specifically designed for this. The high protein diet contains essential amino acids that help younger fish grow rapidly. It is ideal for late spring and summer feeding when water temperatures are 70°F and above. Hikari Gold, which was mentioned above for Color Enhancing diet is also a high protein daily diet that increases growth rates in warm water temperatures between 68°F and 86°F. The most affordable growth diet, which is not intended for everyday use, but can certainly be supplemented, is Keystone Hatcheries 45% Hi Pro Pellets. Since these pellets were designed to be fed to Gamefish, like trout and bass, there are really no guidelines for Koi. However, if you want to give them a try, feed a few times a week when water temperatures are 70°F and above. Be sure to feed a staple diet on other days.

Live Feed

There is no substitute for the nutrients found in living food. A terrific way for you to ensure that your fish get ALL the nutrients that they need is to give them a dose of live food at least once a week. This is a feeding technique that we started to use with our brood stock (fish that we use to spawn) about 15 years ago. It proved to be so beneficial that we now feed all of our Koi (except the ones in mud bottom ponds) live food once a week. There is no limit to live food available for Koi and Goldfish, but some examples include Duckweed, Algae, Romaine Lettuce, Earthworms, Shrimp, Grasshoppers, Daphnia, Tubifex Worms, Bloodworms and small Frog Tadpoles. We feed “diced night crawlers” and Duckweed frequently.

Seasonal Feeding

As water temperatures go up and down it is important to adjust your feeding patterns accordingly, taking into account the ability of your fish to digest and assimilate the food, and your biofilters ability to process the waste. Below are some guidelines, but never feed more than your fish can consume within a couple minutes and never feed if your water quality is poor. Koi and Goldfish that are in good condition can go weeks without feeding, so if you have poor water quality, cease all feeding until you have performed water changes and resolved the problems.

Above 85°F: These high water temperatures are dangerous because of stress to fish and lower oxygen levels. Do what you can to cool the water through partial water changes and shading. Only feed Wheat Germ based diets in small amounts that the fish will eat in one or two minutes during the morning and/or evening.
70 to 85°F: This is the ideal growing water temperature for Koi & Goldfish. Feed Staple, Color and Growth diets in amounts that the fish will consume within a couple minutes up to 4 times a day. Koi & Goldfish have very small stomachs, so they prefer eating small amounts of food frequently rather than large amounts occasionally.
60 to 69°F: Reduce feeding frequency to once or twice a day at most. Feed Wheat Germ and Staple diets but avoid Growth diets.
50-59°F: Feed no more often than once a day and limit it to Wheat Germ diets. If your fish show no interest in feeding, let them rest.
Below 50°F: Do not feed your fish unless they are begging you! This will only happen if the sun has warmed the water and triggered their feeding behavior…or if you have a bad thermometer! If you do feed them, limit it to Wheat Germ diets and only feed once or twice per week. Once the water temperature has dropped to the low 40’s, you will do more harm than good by disturbing your fish.

Feeding Program

As mentioned at the beginning of this section, fish benefit from a variety of food source. There are an unlimited number of potential combinations, but the following is an example of a feeding program, similar to what we feed our Koi: