How Many Bags of Feed For 1,000 Fish

Introduction

If a dollar is being paid for how many times I answer the question “How many bags of feed will I use for 1,000 fish from Juveniles to table size?” Then maybe I should be a millionaire by now if not a billionaire.

This question has always come by and will continue to be asked until the kingdom comes, so I’m putting this short article together to help anyone who wants to venture into fish farming and is thinking of raising 1,000 fish to table size. Still, he/she doesn’t know the number of bags to use.

It is no news that a fish should eat well to reach their desired weight and size. This means that for a fish to achieve 1kg in size within a stipulated period, it should have eaten 1 kilogram of feed; often referred to as the Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR).

This might not be the reality of things especially if you’re in Nigeria cos of the high increase in prices of feed and the reduction in feed quality. So, if you want to calculate FCR due to this factor, you should budget within 1.2:1 – 1.5:1 i.e. one kilogram of fish will eat an average of 1.2kg – 1.5kg of feed to attain the desired weight.

NOTE: This article is a guide to how many bags of feed you’re expected to use for 1,000 fish in a production cycle, it doesn’t mean it will be 100% accurate. It might be more or less depending on different factors.

How Many Bags of Feed For 1,000 Fish

I have put a disclaimer above that this is just a rough estimate of the quantity you’ll need to feed 1,000 juveniles to table size.

The quantity I’ll mention below will vary due to:

• Size of fish
• Quality of fish
• Management skills
• Quality of feed

More explanation on the above points is a topic on its own because I don’t want to bore you much or overload you with too much information.

Let’s just dive into the number of bags you need to feed 1,000 fish to table size.

I’ll not recommend any brand of feed in this article nor will I include the price of each bag because it will vary from location and the time you’ll buy them.

In a saner cline, normal juveniles should be from 8 cm to 10cm and weigh around 10g.

This means they should be able to pick 2mm comfortably without any issues. If that is the case, it means that in their first month (counting from the day they start eating on your farm), they’ll eat 2 bags of 2mm feed.

Some people prefer to boost their fish with 1.5mm or 2mm for a week after they arrive on the farm, but if you get a quality seed, you don’t need to do that.

Depending on how fast your fish is growing putting into consideration other parameters, you can change from 2mm to 3mm within 3 weeks.
This means after 3 weeks of stocking your fish, you should sort them and change the size of feed you’ll give to the fish.

NOTE: They’ll not grow equally hence the need to sort them before changing the feed.

If you like, you can stretch feeding them 2mm to four weeks (1 month) instead of the 3 weeks I mentioned earlier, it’s about choice and preferences.

In the second month when you have started feeding them with 3mm, they would have grown bigger than the normal size, which should show you’re feeding them well.

You’ll feed the fish 8 bags of 3mm for another month, which totals 2 months from the stocking date.

As I mentioned, they’ll not grow at the same rate, so you’ll need to sort them again in the third week of the second month.

Some people sort every two weeks till the third month but you’re permitted to do every three weeks. Again this depends on how fast your fish are growing and the type of pond you’re using to raise the fish.

In the third month of your stocking, you should be able to get melange from the fish you stock i.e. weighing from 250g to 400g although it might not be in large quantity.

At this stage, you’ll feed your fish an average of 15 bags of 4mm fish feed (any brand of your choice). Again, if you sort them out well, you’ll get the one that will grow faster and pick the next size of feed (6mm earlier) than others.

Some people get 800g above from 4 months but it is not all which means at least by 5 months you should attain the desired size and weight.

By month 4, you will need 20 bags of 6mm feed and by month 5, you’ll use 20 bags of 9mm.

Some people don’t use 9mm at all before selling the fish off, but I will say you can and should use it.Y

Quick Formula

You will need at least 65 bags of feed to raise 1,000 fish to table size in an average of 5 months.

You can calculate the number of feed you’ll need for any quantity of fish by yourself if you use the formula below:

Juvenile catfish = 10g

1kg = 1,000g

1,000g – 10g = 990g

Assuming we’ve 1,000 fish with a 10% mortality rate, the total fish we’ll have at the end of the production cycle should be 900.

Therefore, to get the actual number of bags to feed your fish,

900 x 990g = 891,000g

891,000 / 1,000 = 891kg

Each bag of feed from 2mm above comes in 15kg

Therefore, total bags of feed = 891/15kg = 59.4 bags

NOTE: We have deducted the mortality rate from this calculation which affected the quantity of bags we’ll use but in reality, all the 10% fish will not die immediately, so let’s recalculate thus:

1000 x 990g = 990,000g

990,000 / 1000 = 990kg

990kg/15kg = 66 bags of feed.

You can use this formula to quickly determine the number of feed you’ll need for any fish quantity.

Conclusion

The rough estimate of the amount of feed you’ll need for 1,000 fish, from juvenile to table size, might not be accurate and/or might defer depending on some factors.

If the source of your fish is not good enough, you might be using more than the 65 bags of feed estimated in this article thereby spending more money.

The estimate above is for those who stocked the right juvenile fish and are planning to raise it to table size.
If you stock fingerlings catfish, you’ll use more feed than mentioned.

Just use this estimate as a guide for you or for anyone who wants to start a catfish farming business.

To recap, below are the quantities of bags you’ll need to feed 1,000 catfish to table size from juvenile (approximately):

2mm – 2 bags (1 month)

3mm – 8 bags (1st/2nd month)

4mm – 15 bags (2nd/3rd month)

6mm – 20 bags (3rd/4th month)

9mm – 15 – 20 bags (4th – 5th month)

I am here cheering you up to success in your fish business.