Whether you’re planning to buy feed pellets for your fish, or you decide to buy a pellet machine to make your own fish feed, it’s important for you to know how to differentiate between good quality pellets and poor quality pellets. Here are 5 easy ways to tell you how good or bad the pellets are. With these methods, you can avoid wasting fish feed and keep your fish healthy.
Look at the color: fish pellet feed is made of fish meal, soybean meal, cotton meal, rapeseed meal, meat, bone meal, and other main raw materials mixed evenly and granulated in a certain proportion. The color of the finished product can reflect the number of raw materials used to a certain extent. If there are more fish meal and soybean meal, the color of the fish material will be yellowish; if there are many kinds of raw materials, the color of the material will be dark red; if there are many impurities, the color of the material will be slightly gray, etc.
Look at the particle size: fish feed is pellets formed after high-temperature expansion. By observing the particle size, the proportion of the original particles, the fineness of the original particles, the uniformity of tempering, the granulation process, and the selection of the ring die can be judged. The high-quality fish feed has a uniform and smooth particle size and a neat section.
Fish feed needs to be transported many times from production to sale, and objectively requires a certain hardness. Under normal circumstances, twisting your fingers a few times will not break, but it should not be too hard. If the feed breaks after a twist, it means that the feed is not hard enough, and the powder yield during the transportation is high, which will easily lead to waste of feed; if the hardness is too large, the palatability is poor, which affects the dissolution of the feed in the digestive tract of the fish and easily causes fish enteritis.
Pellets of fish feed are mixed with various raw materials, and then puffed by steam conditioning. When the raw material matures, it will emit a unique aroma. Grab a handful from an open feed bag and sniff it in front of your nose. If there is a musty, bitter, burnt, artificial fishy smell, raw fish meal, or raw meal, it means that there is a problem in the processing of fish feed. For example, the raw material is of poor quality and contains a lot of impurities; or the moisture content is too high and it deteriorates during storage.
Grab a handful of feed and soak it in a container filled with water. After dissolving, wash and rub slowly with your hands. If there is sand or cloudy water, it is poor quality feed. Poor quality feed will make the fish digest poorly and cause disease. And also cause a lot of fish feed waste.
The quality of the taste is the main factor that affects fish feeding behavior. Take a small amount of feed and put it in your mouth to chew it slowly and taste it. Through the touch and taste of our oral cavity, we can feel the hardness of the pellets and the presence or absence of peculiar smell, whether the feed has deteriorated, whether the feed is mixed with impurities such as sand, soil, and so on.
If you want to make your own feed pellets, then you need a machine called a floating fish extruder. But the standard quality of the extruder is also different. Before purchasing a floating fish extruder, discuss their pellet warranty with the salesperson. If they know what a good pellet standard is, then their pellet machine works well, then this pellet machine supplier can be trusted.