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Making fish feed pellets is a crucial aspect of farming that directly affects the health and growth of fish. During the fish feed production line, it is vital to follow a series of steps and pay attention to detail. Each step, from fish feed making formula to extrusion and processing, affects the nutritional value and quality of the pellets. Understanding every key step and the associated considerations is essential to ensure the quality and nutritional balance of feed pellets.
fish food pelletsHow to Make Your Own Fish Food Pellets?
There are three main classifications of fish feed:
Floating Fish Feed
Sinking Fish Feed
Slow Sinking Fish Feed/Fish Bait
Different fish feeds have different production process, equipment, and cost. Please contact us for a free consultation.
Mastering the Fish Feed Production Process: Key Steps and Techniques
The fish feed manufacturing process usually includes the following steps. The steps I have provided are for your reference only. The specific fish feed making process can be adjusted and optimized according to the size of the fish feed production plant and the fish food production targets to ensure that high quality feeds are produced to meet the nutritional requirements of different types of fish.
Raw Material Preparation
The safety of fish feed pellets is crucial and the ingredients must be contamination free, fresh, and stable. Ingredients for fish feed formulations contain fishmeal, soybean meal, cornmeal, and wheat bran. Starch is an important ingredient in aquafeeds, ranging from 5% to 60%. Generally, the starch content of sinking fish food pellet is 10%-15%, and the starch content of floating fish food pellet is not less than 20%.
Crushing
Before pelletizing, the ingredients must be ground into powder. Grinding of raw materials usually improves the digestibility, acceptability, mixing properties, and pelleting of the feed.
Mixing
The crushed ingredients are weighed and mixed in the desired proportions according to the fish feed formulas. Typically, the dry ingredients are mixed first, followed by the liquid materials. Liquid materials such as fish oil may be added at the end and further homogenized.
Conditioning (optional)
Conditioning is a processing step in which the material is subjected to hydrothermal treatment. After conditioning, the powdered feed can improve feed digestibility, improve the stability of pellet feed, kill harmful bacteria, and increase the amount of liquid added to pellet feed. Due to the high price of the wet fish feed extruder machine for this process, this process can be omitted for ordinary feed.
Pelletizing
Two types of fish feed making machines can be used for pelletizing fish feed: common fish feed pellet machine and fish feed extruder machines.
