Catfish Nutrition: Feeding Food Fish

Since feed is the biggest expense in catfish production, feeding a nutritious feed that converts efficiently and promotes growth without hurting water quality should promote production and profit.

Unlike other farmed animals and under intensive production, fish do not always have feed available and cannot feed at will. The feeder decides how much feed to offer to the fish. There are no standard feeding practices across the industry, mainly because many factors can affect feeding, and every pond of fish behaves differently. So, feeding catfish is a highly subjective process.

The information in this publication is based on results from feeding studies done over several years at the National Warmwater Aquaculture Center. Consider our recommendations as guidelines, since management practices vary from farm to farm. The guidelines are for feeding healthy fish grown from advanced fingerlings to market size.

Feeding Rate

Several factors dictate how much to feed catfish in a production pond. These include standing crop (number and weight of fish in the pond), fish size, water temperature, water quality, and weather. Generally, catfish should be fed daily as much as they will eat with minimal to no leftovers, to prevent spoiling the water quality. Feeding what the fish will eat is especially important when you raise catfish in a multiple-batch system where there are fish of different sizes in the pond. This will allow the smaller, less aggressive fish to feed after the big ones are satiated. This type of feeding may be a problem, though, since you might not know when the fish have eaten all they can eat. Thus, it is easy to overfeed, which may generate leftover feed and may hurt water quality.

Feeding rates should not be more than what the fish in the pond need. Long-term average daily feeding rates should not be more than 120 pounds per acre for regular ponds, 200 pounds per acre for intensively aerated ponds, and 250 pounds for split ponds. But it is okay sometimes to feed at higher rates if water quality is not compromised. Our data showed that feeding the fish daily as much as they will eat resulted in higher production and weight gain.

Feeding Frequency

Once vs. Twice Daily

Generally, feeding once daily is satisfactory for food fish grow-out. Research has shown that feeding food fish twice daily is not necessarily beneficial. Although fish fed twice daily were offered more feed than fish fed once daily, the extra feed fed was not completely converted into weight gain. It is likely that feeding twice daily increases feed conversion because, if the feeder is not careful, feed can be easily wasted by overfeeding.

Once Daily vs. Once Every Other Day or Third Day

Although there are some advantages (reduced feed conversion, labor cost, and aeration) to feeding every other day or every third day, we do not recommend this for routine feeding, since fish fed every other day or every third day cannot consume enough feed on days they are fed to make up for the missed feed on days when you don’t feed them. Also, feeding every other day or every third day appears to reduce fish processing yield, and it extends the production cycle. So, in the long term, it may not be economical.

Seven Days vs. Five or Six Days per Week

During the growing season, most catfish farmers feed their fish seven days a week, but some would feed six days a week. Our data show that feeding six days a week (not feeding on Sundays) reduced net production by 3.3 percent, and feeding five days a week (not feeding on both Saturdays and Sundays) reduced net production by 6.9 percent, compared to fish fed seven days per week for a growing season. Feed conversion was reduced by 4.8 percent and 7.9 percent, respectively, for fish fed six days and five days a week, compared to fish fed seven days a week.

Maintenance Feeding

Maintenance feeding means that all feed eaten by the fish is used to maintain the animal, with no gain or loss of weight. You can get this feeding regimen either by feeding fish a maintenance ration daily or feeding as much as it appears they will eat one or two times per week.

Since ponds usually have fish of various sizes, it is better to feed all they will eat on days fed than feeding a little every day. Feeding the fish all they eat on the days fed lets smaller, less aggressive fish feed. Based on our research results, it appears feeding once a week as much as the fish can eat can maintain the body weight of food-sized catfish under a single-batch cropping system.

Feeding Time

The best time to feed fish during the day on a large farm is mainly dictated by the logistics required to feed large numbers of ponds in a limited timeframe. As a result, during warm weather, many catfish producers start feeding early in the morning as soon as dissolved oxygen levels begin to increase. This appears to work well.

We do not recommend feeding near dark or at night in large commercial catfish ponds.

Winter Feeding

Unlike warm-blooded animals, catfish do not consume extruded feed consistently when water temperature drops below 70°F. When water temperature drops to 50°F and below, farmed catfish more or less stop eating. Many catfish producers choose not to feed in winter for a variety of reasons, one of which is that it’s difficult to see a positive response from a winter feeding program.

Research conducted at Auburn University has shown that food-sized catfish held over winter without feed can lose up to 9 percent of their body weight, while catfish fed 1 percent of their body weight when water temperature exceeds 55°F gain 18 percent weight over the winter.

Publication 2414 (POD-04-25)

Revised by Jimmy Avery, PhD, Extension Professor, and Fernando Y. Yamamoto, PhD, Assistant Research Professor, Delta Research and Extension Center. Written by Menghe Li, PhD, former Research Professor, Delta Research and Extension Center; Edwin H. Robinson, PhD, former Research Professor, Delta Research and Extension Center; and Charles D. Hogue, Jr., former Extension Associate, Black Belt Experiment Station.