If you are going to raise Koi then you need to know what Koi food will work best and keep your Koi healthy and happy. The Koi is considered to be omnivorous, which is to say that it eats both plant and animal. Koi do not have stomachs so they eat in small and regular amounts.
Koi are fairly easy to train and if you make a routine of placing small amounts of food in the tank in the same area and at the same times each day they will quickly become accustomed to that.
If you follow the routine faithfully, you may even be able to feed them by hand as they become more and more trusting of you and comfortable with the routine.
What you feed your Koi is as important if not more important than when you feed them if you want them to stay colorful and healthy. The Koi need a combination of fats, carbohydrates, proteins, minerals and vitamins for this to happen.
Koi food is available in both floating and sinking types. The Koi its self is naturally a bottom feeding fish so for many this is the preferred method in which to provide them with the food they need plus the food, if not immediately eaten will last better than the floating type.
The advantages of the floating style though are that it does allow you to see how much your fish is actually eating. In reality, a combination of the two will most likely yield the best overall results.
Regardless of which of the types of food that you decide to use, the key is going to be not to over feed them. You should give the tank enough food for about five minutes of feeding at a time.
When figuring out the amount of Koi food to give to the fish, it is generally the accepted practice to figure it by body weight as opposed to food weight. A larger fish should eat about 2 percent of its weight and a smaller Koi should consume close to 5 percent.
You may also want to supplement some live food in your Koi food diet such as small worms and tadpoles for the larger Koi and mosquito larva for the smaller Koi and water fleas make a good supplemental meal for the fry.
If you want you can add other things such as small pieces of brown bread. Do not use the white kind because the bleaching used can cause health issues with your Koi. You can also add some occasional duckweed and lettuce, as these are similar to some of the greens that grow in or near their normal habitat.
The key to Koi food is not over feeding and being consistent with the amounts and timing of the feedings because Koi really are a creature of habit when it comes to feeding.
You can keep your fish happy by following the guidelines we outlined here and making sure that you keep to the schedule.
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