What Feed Size to Give Your Post-juvenile Catfish
Here are the different sizes currently in the market:
1.5mm, 1.8mm, 2mm, 3mm, 4mm, 6mm, 8mm, 10mm, etc.
The bigger you fishes, the bigger the feed size they can pick.
Here’s what is recommend if you just stocked your ponds, if your fishes fall into the following Juvenile Catfish 6-10 g categories
- Post-juvenile Catfish (10 – 50 grams): 2mm feed size
The size of the feed is proportional to the growth of your Post Juvenile catfish. As your fishes grow, the size of feed they can pick will increase. Here’s the feed size I recommend for bigger fishes, based on their size/weight, if you’re to give them floating feed:
- 10 – 50 grams: 2mm feed size
- 50 – 150 grams: 3mm feed size
- 150 – 400 grams: 4mm feed size
All things being equal, your fishes should be around 200 – 300 grams in 2 months with floating feed alone, if they are being fed properly; after then, you can switch to sinking feed and give them the following feed sizes:
200 – 300 grams: 2mm feed size
300 to 600 grams: 4mm feed size
600 grams to 1kg+: 6mm feed size
If your fishes exceed 1kg in weight, and you’re able to get bigger feed sizes, then you can consider giving them 8mm, or even later 10mm, feed sizes. 3 to 4kg fishes eat 6mm sinking feed just fine, though, so don’t worry too much if you can’t find bigger feed sizes.
Feeding Your Post-juvenile Catfish
How often you feed your fishes will differ depending on a lot of factors, but for the results I get – an average of 1.5kg to 2kg fish size in 6 months – here’s what I recommend:
- Post-juvenile Catfish (10 grams and above)
- Feeding: Once daily
Reducing Post-juvenile Catfish mortality
Catfish farmers using earthen ponds, surface tanks, plastic tanks etc. often face the process of high fingerlings mortality rates when raising them.
Therefore, utmost care must be exercised in handling these fragile fishes to be able to optimise production and profit. A wholesome pond grooms healthy fishes. Ahead of stocking, 250kg of lime must be applied per acre of pond surface. Also make sure that other unwanted wastes and organisms like frog are cleared before stocking the pond.
Fingerlings are most vulnerable when they’re significantly less than 10g in proportions, thus the highest mortality rates occur in this period.
Over stocking the pond also contributes to high mortality. The reason being they must be fed with a somewhat large level of feed that’ll thus end in higher quantity of waste released in to the pond.
High quantity of waste in fish ponds degrades water quality and must be minimised around possible. Secondly, catfish are carnivorous naturally, meaning they prey on flesh. So you ought to ensure that whenever stocking fingerlings, they must be sorted weekly and fingerlings of exactly the same size must be stocked together.
Again, fingerlings of similar sizes must be stocked into smaller tanks before transferring them to the key grow-out pond.
Overfeeding fingerlings and juveniles can also result in high mortality rates because they’ve uncontrollable appetite which result in overfeeding and consequently death.
Another reason is transfer stress, when they’re transferred in one location to some other, such fingerlings/ juveniles must be left for at the least 24hours before feeding.
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