Feeding tilapia from fingerlings to harvest size

Why Purina AquaMax?

Under optimal conditions and using only surface aeration, food grade blue tilapia can grow to one pound in as little as 240 days. If you breed your own tilapia, you can add another couple of weeks for egg incubation. Alternatively, if you buy your fingerlings from Lakeway Tilapia, you can subtract about 46 days from the grow-out period, because that is the average age of the tilapia fingerlings that we ship to our customers. The reason that we say "as little as 240 days", is because getting there requires the exact nutrition in Purina AquaMax. Now before you let your inner cynic out, this isn't a sales pitch for AquaMax. In fact, if there was an alternative that gave us better results, we would use it. But there just isn't.

If you read our tilapia food for sale page, and then call your local feed store to price check us, you will discover that our claims of offering Purina AquaMax as a service to our customers, and the fact that we don't make any money selling it, are completely true. So what's the big deal about AquaMax anyway? Well, it's the benchmark used to compare all other tilapia diets. It's also the food of choice for scientific studies. Recently, in an article published in the Journal of Applied Aquaculture, Auburn University used AquaMax for their study of tilapia growth. But most importantly, AquaMax is the fuel that drives the incredibly fast growth of our tilapia. It saves us money, and keeps our harvest profitable.

It's all about economics

What's the point of saving money on food, if you have to feed your tilapia for an additional 100 days? As we said, a food grade blue tilapia can grow to over one pound in as little as 240 days. But, some people can't get their tilapia to grow to one pound in a full year, if ever. The longer you feed your tilapia, the more they will cost per pound. And it not just the food cost, it's electricity, water treatment, filter media replacement, sterilizer longevity, chemical usage, as well as employee costs (or your own valuable time). These hidden costs add up quickly, and can make your own tilapia filets more expensive than store-bought retail.

Tilapia only grow fast when they are kept in optimal conditions and fed a nutritionally perfect diet in precisely measured portions. Experienced tilapia farmers know the exact date that they will harvest their fish. This way they can project their future income and plan ahead for processing and packaging. They know exactly what their costs will be, before they put their fingerlings in the grow out pond. Their success depends on accuracy and they rarely guess about anything. Most significantly, they know exactly what each and every tilapia will cost to raise, and can commit their harvest for sale before it's even been hatched.

Game Changing Point: Every tilapia produces three valuable products: filets, fish meal, and fertilizer. The filets are the product that everyone knows best, but what about the rest of the fish? Dry it out, grind it in a mill, and you'll have a fish meal that sells for 10 dollars per pound at the garden center. And don't throw away your tilapia poop either. Pour it through a polyester pad, and lay it in the sun to dry. On large tilapia farms, they send poop directly from the drum filter onto a drying conveyor, which produces a mountain of moist poop. They use this to produce a very high quality fertilizer. This is why the composition of fish wastes is so important.

How AquaMax was developed

Most tilapia food is born out of a need to do something with farming trash. The manufacturers literally look at what they can get for little or nothing, then move forward from there. They take the by-products from soy, wheat and corn farms, add a few binders, toss in some oils and powders, and in some cases, add dirt, clay, and even rock dust, to make their products. They are counting on you not understanding ideas such as digestibility, caloric intake, and the composition of fish wastes.

Purina AquaMax was developed in reverse, starting with the needs of the tilapia, and then working backwards to compile the exact formulation of ingredients required. Sure, Purina recycles farming by-products, but only in the proportions necessary for optimal nutrition. Since the nutritional needs of tilapia vary as they grow, AquaMax has eight different formulations; each one designed for maximum growth at every stage. Take the typical 3/16 pellet for example. Other companies focus on high protein and high fat, while Purina, working in conjunction with university researchers, put together a formula that is deliberately lower in protein, and only 6 percent fat. This is because Purina understands that larger fish can get their energy and building blocks to grow from other ingredients, and don't need to store fat.

As long as were on the subject of the 3/16 inch pellet; some tilapia food start-ups are promoting this an "intermediate" food for juvenile tilapia, about four inches long. This claim highlights their ignorance to fish farming practices in general. The 3/16 inch pellet is used as a grow out food for all tilapia sizes over 2 ounces. The 3/16 inch size is designed to aid with food domination/control in dense ponds, creating a more evenly sized harvest.

Trust in Purina - For over 100 years

So why are there other brands of tilapia food anyway? It's not like the other brands are significantly cheaper. They certainly aren't better for your fish. It's like everything else on the Internet these days. Take the so-called "Premium Fish Food" company. They didn't even exist online before 2010, that's a matter of public record. But what's really disturbing is the start date of 2004 claimed on their web site copyright; six years before their domain was even dreamed up. If you can't trust them to be honest with the simple things, what can you trust? The truth is, the Internet is full of people with incredible marketing skills, selling bags of garbage.

Purina has been trusted for generations. Their company is strong, and they invest millions in perfecting their formulas. They don't need hype and creative search engine optimization. They are the feed experts behind the winningest horses, the tastiest chickens, the best omega-3 eggs, and just about every turkey at Thanksgiving. And if that's not enough, AquaMax is trusted by over 90 percent of American aquatic growers.

Tilapia Feeding Charts

There are three feeding charts presented below. These are only applicable to pure strain food grade Blue tilapia and pure strain food grade Nile tilapia. They show the exact amount to feed for each day of the grow out period. All you have to do is determine exactly how much 100 of your tilapia weigh, and feed the exact amount shown for that day. Then you just follow along with each subsequent day until you reach one pound. You only have to weigh your tilapia once, because the next days weight is already calculated. This is why you use AquaMax. The growth at any given size is predictable by the amount fed the previous day!

If you have more, or less, than 100 fingerlings, you will have to calculate for the difference, but luckily, 100 is an easy number to multiply and divide with. Just make sure that you meet all of the requirements at the top of each chart. Read our tilapia farming guide if you need more information on full surface aeration.

You can buy Purina AquaMax here.

The feeding charts below will take 194 days to complete. You can reduce the total time to 180 days or even less by feeding slightly more at the beginning of each chart and then tapering off to match the weights at the end. This takes some practice and a watchful eye on water quality, but may be worth the effort to hit a specific harvest date. If you decide to accelerate the feeding charts in this manner, be sure to switch to the next food when your tilapia reach the final weight listed on each chart.
For example: You can start the first chart by feeding an extra 9.45 grams of food on the first day, then reduce the extra amount by half a gram per day until your fish weigh 28 grams each. You can start the second chart by feeding an extra 28.4 grams then taper off by 1.2 grams per day until your fish weigh 57 grams each.

28 day grow out feed chart from 1/3 ounce to 1 ounces

Requirements:
Food grade Blue or Nile fingerlings.
AquaMax Fingerling Starter 300 1/16 sinking pellet.
Water temperature of 88 degrees fahrenheit.
Full surface aeration.
Maximum pond density of 32 ounces of tilapia weight per cubic foot of swimming area.

24 day grow out feed chart from 1 ounce to 2 ounces

Requirements:
Food grade Blue or Nile fingerlings.
AquaMax Grower 400 3/32 sinking pellet.
Water temperature of 88 degrees fahrenheit.
Full surface aeration.
Maximum pond density of 32 ounces of tilapia weight per cubic foot of swimming area.

142 day grow out feed chart from 2 ounces to 16 ounces

Requirements:
Food grade Blue or Nile juveniles to adult.
AquaMax Dense 4000 3/16 floating pellet.
Water temperature of 88 degrees fahrenheit.
Full surface aeration.
Maximum pond density of 32 ounces of tilapia weight per cubic foot of swimming area.