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The difference between floating and sinking fish feed pellets

2019-04-25

Commercial fish diets can be classified into floating (extruding) or traditional sinking (pressure) pellets. Both floating and sinking feed can produce satisfactory growth, but some fish prefer to floating feed, while others prefer to sinking feed. So which fish feed pellets are better? Sink or float? That's a problem. Before I begin, I would like to make a statement that neither can be considered absolutely superior to the others, and that your choice to use floating or sinking pellets depends on what kind of fish you have.

The difference between floating and sinking fish feed pellets
Photos: Floating & Sinking Feed Making Machine for Fish Feed Making

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Floating Fish Feed Pellets are more expensive to buy and more expensive for feed millers to manufacture. Floating pellets (also known as expanded or extruded pellets) require to go through an extrusion process during processing. This section of a feed mill is most of the time costly to set-up and run than a standard pelleting section.

Floating Pellets are usually used in larger underlings, food fish and broodfish. Floating on the surface of the water (usually maintaining integrity in the water for several hours), the fish must come up to the surface to eat. This enables you to observe your fish each day, which helps in monitoring their health and vigor. Also you can adjust the amount of feed per day and avoid wasted feed and pond pollution problems.

Sinking Fish Feed Pellets also know as a hard pellet, are more economical. Sinking feed will have water stability of up to an hour, and will gradually sink and settle on the bottom if uneaten. Since ingredients are pressed together it makes it impossible for the fish to selectively eat the ingedients they want. Sinking pellets are adapted to mechanical feeding and can be handled considerably without deterioration. Sinking pellets are sometimes used in winter when the fish do not regularly surface. Also by pelleting some feeds it can be avoided to harm some ingredients which do not like the extrusion process.

Advantages of floating fish feed

Floating fish feed can float for a long time on surface of water after feeding, Fish Farmer can have a good observation of fish feeding conditions, and can adjust fish feeding weight according to feeding situation. At the same time, Fish farmers can know clearly growth and health status according to feed consumption. Farmers can calculate weight of fish feed, and offer rapid feeding, according to fish variety, fish size, and fish quantity, as well as water temperature. It not only saves a lot of time, but also save labor.

Floating fish feed has a higher feed efficiency. Due to being processed under high temperature and high pressure, starch in fish feed is cooked; fat is more easy for digestion and absorption; and fiber structure and cell wall are destroyed and softened, as well as all other harmful substances in raw material are destroyed. Thereby floating fish feed can improve feed palatability and digestion absorbing rate.

Floating fish feed will not dissolve in water for a long time, and high-quality floating fish feed can enjoy up to 12-hour floating time. Compared with residue of powder fish feed, floating fish feed is very beneficial for the growth of fish and the protection of water pollution.

Machines for making fish feed pellet

Sunwit fish feed extruders have been widely used in small and medium-sized fish farms or fish feed production plants. Through the fish feed extruder you can use cheap local raw materials to produce high-quality fish feed, which may save feed costs.

Machines for making fish feed pellet

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Floating fish feed making process

Floating fish feed production mainly goes through the following steps: Material crushing→material mixing→extruding process→pellets drying→oil spraying process→pellets cooling→pellet packing.

1.First the ingredients for making fish feed are ground more finely by the hammer mill, thereby making the feed more digestible.
2. Powdered ingredients are mixed in a certain proportion by fish feed mixer.
3. The kernel step of feed production is extrusion. There are two types of fish feed machines for extrusion: dry type fish feed machine and wet type fish feed machine. For feed production, dry type fish feed extruder is recommended, due to suitable price and stable performance. Wet type fish feed machine is more suitable for large scale production and people who have higher requirements for feed pellet performance.
4. Fish feed pellets from pellet making machine need to lower high moisture and temperature. Pellet drying by fish feed dryer is necessary.
5. For acquiring better smell and taste, people often use oil spraying machine to spray oil to the surface of fish feed pellets. Oil spraying step is optional. If you think pellets from extrusion are ok, just ignore it.

Sinking fish feed pellets making process

Fish feed extruder is the main manufacturing equipment for extruding and sinking fish feed. Feed ingredients such as starch and ground raw materials are mixed with a certain amount of water and steam thoroughly sent to the extruder. Driven by the extrusion screw, the temperature increases, the extrusion chamber pressure increases and the raw material matures. When the raw materials of high temperature and under high pressure are extruded from the die mold, the pressure is decreased in instantaneous and under the influence of pressure difference, the moisture content in raw materials is vaporized rapidly to make raw materials inflate. At the same time, the fish feeds are cut into suitable size by the knife of the fish feed extruder.