I recently received the following email from a newsletter subscriber of mine based in Canada. Verne Gilkes is the owner of Mountain View Koi Club and wanted to know my views about feeding koi food to trout.
"Hi Sean
I just noticed you are located in Wigan.
Several years ago I had the opportunity to visit the Nexus plant not long after the Nexus Filter was introduced to the USA at the Mid Atlantic Koi Show held at Quality Koi which was their Grand Opening as a Koi Farm.
Sean Your article on Koi Food is pretty straight forward for a koi keeper who knows how to treat his fish.
do Not know if you have people in England who feed trout food to their koi?
We have several here in our Koi Club and no matter what I tell them they think it is the greatest food going. Of course the koi will eat it, they will eat anything that has a flavor to it however it is very bad for them. It can lead to all sorts of problems down the road i.e. bladder problems as it is an animal based protein and fat food.
We visited one of our club members ponds for the first time two weeks ago. His ponds were impeccable however he had several fish that were in dyer straights. One we had to put to sleep as its gut was about to blow out because of a 3 inch ulcer and an Aka Bekko 16 inches had 12 ulcers 1 to 11/2 inch all over it's body. A third shiro utsuri 18-20 inches was so fat it could hardly turn around.
My personal feelings the problems were from feeding the trout food.
What do you think of feeding trout food to koi?
He has and sells frys. A couple of our members bought some of the frys. As I was examining the little guys they also had a fattish appearance to them. They were not the slender appearance of normal young frys.
One of the hurdles we have to clear is trout food is less than half the price of koi food.
What could you advise to convince these koi owners who are great water keepers and love their koi a lot to switch to some Quality Koi Food?
Happy Koi Keeping
Mountain View Koi Club, Vankleek Hill , Ontario, Canada - Contact Verne Gilkes mailto:gilkes@hawk.igs.net
To see my response go to http://www.garden-pond-filters.com/Newsletters/FeedKoi_TroutFood.htm
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