Types of Fish Feed in Ghana
Fish ponds can be fed with a variety of foods, including natural food, supplementary feeds and Commercial Fish Feeds.
Natural food
The pond can naturally provide natural food. This could include plankton* and detritus*. Water quality is a key factor in their abundance. You can provide fish with natural food, especially organic fertilization.
Supplementary Feeds
Supplementary feeds are regular feeds that are distributed to fish in the pond. These feeds are usually made from locally available materials such as kitchen wastes, terrestrial plants and agricultural by-products.
Commercial Fish Feeds
Modern commercial aquaculture is reliant on manufactured feeds to provide the necessary nutrition for farmed fish. These feeds can be either granules and pellets and provide nutrition that is stable and concentrated, which allows fish to grow and feed effectively.
Carnivorous fish are a large part of many of the fish that are farmed more intensively today. Fish oil and fish meal were essential components of aquaculture’s modern feeds. This was in the 1970s. These ingredients are mixed with vegetable proteins, cereal grains and vitamins to make feed pellets and flakes. Because it helps to bind the ingredients, wheat is a popular ingredient.
Benefits of floating fish feed
Fish feed is a must if you are interested in aquaculture or fish farming. Let’s look at the many benefits of floating fish foods.
Waste reduction: Floating fish feed can retain their shape even after being in the water for hours. They can be eaten later if they aren’t eaten right away. They won’t sink for an average of 16 hours.
Convenient observation: Floating fish pellets are a popular choice for fish farmers because they can monitor the feeding intensity of their fish. This allows them to adjust their feed accordingly. It is vital to determine if the feed rates are too high or too low for fish growth and efficiency.
Prevention of diseases : The floating pellets can be removed by fish if they are not eaten. This will stop the fish feed from becoming rotten and spreading diseases. Rotting fish feed can lead to the spread of dangerous diseases. It also encourages the growth of bacteria.
What are the ingredients of fish feed Ghana?
Due to rising costs for commercial fish feeds, small-scale fish farmers in Ghana have had to turn to alternative feed types to raise their fish. Some fish farmers mix farm-made feeds with commercial feeds.
Produced from locally available ingredients, farm-made feeds used groundnut bran (92%), groundnut meal (90%), fishmeal (90%), wheat bran (74%), and maize (60%).
Protein raw materials: Fish meal (with 62%-66% crude proteins), blood meal with silkworm chrysalis meals, shrimp meal, and soybean meal (with 45% crude proteins), blood meal with silkworm chrysalis meals, shrimp meal, cottonseed meal (with 32%-42% crude protien), rapeseed meal (33%-40% crude protien), sesame meal, corn gluten meal, and peanut meal. Insects, earthworms and maggots are high-quality animal protein feeds for fish.
Energy source: wheat and wheat middling, full-cream rice bran, corn, and other grains. Corn is a high-carbohydrate material that cannot be taken in by shrimp or fish. Full cream contains high fat content, so adding approximately 6% to the raw material can help make pelletizing easier and reduce power consumption. A moderate amount of fat can improve the digestibility of feed and increase the availability of protein, which can help to save feed protein.
The mineral substance is an important component in fish feed and plays a crucial role in fish nutrition and growth. The most common raw materials containing minerals include shell powder, eggshell powder, calciumphosphate, bone meal, and shell powder.
How can you make floating fish feed -Manufacturing Process
Selection of raw material
Remember that fish feed processing requires stable raw materials. Starch is the main nutritional component. Sunken fish receive 10% to 15% and floating fish, 20% respectively. Starch is usually between 5% to 60%. In extruding fish feed pellets, carbohydrates are used as emulsifiers and suspending agents.
Material Grinding
Crushing is used to reduce the raw materials to the desired size. For fish feed production between 150 and 700 kg/h, a hammer mill is used. A water drop crusher is used for production rates of 1-10 tons/h. Large-scale aqua feed production companies generally use secondary crushing, which is conventional crushing followed by fine crushing.
Material mixing
This is crucial for the production process of fish feed. This process is determined by the physical properties of the raw materials. It is best to first add large materials to the blender and then add small materials such as vitamins, minerals, or drugs.
Mixture liquids cannot contain more than 10%. Make sure the dry ingredients are well mixed in the blender before adding oil or liquid. You must mix the dry ingredients again after you have sprayed oil or liquid on top. Some fish feeds require moist ingredients.
Extrusion Process
Design of the granulation process as well as the choice of equipment can have a significant impact on the quality of aquatic feed. For granulation, we have both dry and wet fish feed extruders. Dry fish feeders don’t need steam boilers or modulators for wet extruders. While the former is best suited for large-scale fish pellet plants, the latter is better suited for smaller and medium-sized fish feed pellet users. The extruder can be set up to produce different feed parameters such as sinking, semi-humid, buoyancy and slow speed. This allows the extruder to adapt to the needs of aquatic animals.
Pellets drying
The mesh dryer is a continuous convection dryer. The extruder forms pellets that are layered on a steel wire mesh, or perforated plate conveyor. They are then continuously transported through the drying chamber. The dry air is continuously passed through the product layer until it reaches the desired moisture level and leaves the dryer. We recommend a gas-based pellet drying system if you have a wet-type fish-feed machine.
Pellets spraying/Coating
Oil sprayer can be used for spraying oil on fish feed particles from the dryer to improve your senses of smell and taste. The oil sprayer can be used to apply the atomized oil at high speed on the particles. Any excess oil can then be filtered.
Pellets cooling
After the spraying is complete, the fish feed pellets can be transported to a cooler with counterflow for cooling. The advantages of the counter-flow cooler include a small volume of air, high level of automation, and low energy consumption for processing floating fish feed particles.
Pellet packing
The finished particles should be properly packaged to make them easy to transport, store and display. The electronic weighing packaging machine is able to automatically package the pellets into bags and weigh them before sealing the bag. This allows for a significant time and labor savings and can be used for large-scale production. The machine can also be equipped with automatic hot-coding, automatic bag sewing and automatic thread cutting.
Ghana Fish Feed Production
You can easily find popular international brands of feed. Small-scale fish farmers complain that commercial feeds consume at least 60% of their production budget. Experts blame the apparent inability to afford commercial feed on competing demands for maize and sharp devaluations of local currencies, which have impacted the price of soya meal.
While there are many small-scale farmers of ponds in Ghana, they only account for 25% of the country’s annual production. The bulk of production is accounted for by a small number of cage farmers from abroad. Tilapia is the most popular choice for increasing numbers of Ghanaians and accounts for 80%. Catfish account for 20%. Although imported and locally produced feeds are readily available, small pond farmers often find them too expensive and prefer to use self-formulated feeds.
The main carbohydrate source of poultry and fish feed is maize. This high demand drives up the cost. Prices have risen because soya meal is mostly imported from the US. Research has identified many agricultural by-products that could be used as an alternative to maize. These include palm kernel cake, cocoa pod husk and wheat bran. They are used regularly by most pond farmers.
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