Cleveland Ohio, April 29, 2000 - In a very interesting 40-minute presentation, Geoffrey Wallet summarized his graduate work studying the effects of different goldfish feeding rations on the color of baby red Orandas raised from fry over a 4-month period. The primary effort was to correlate caroteniod content of the feeds with the color of the developing fish.
A machine vision system was used to provide an assessment of the color of the fish. A number of commercial feeds were used, and the fish were kept in a continuous water flow through system in 20-gallon tanks. Well water was used for most of the tanks but several had pond water used instead.
The results demonstrated that there were differences between the coloring effects of the feeds. Data was also taken on growth and mortality. Here again, there were significant differences between the feeds. In general, the best results were achieved for the "highest quality" (i.e. most expensive) feeds: Ziegler, Vibragrow, and Biokyowa.
But interestingly, one of the strongest factors seemed to be the use of pond water; this really supported good growth and coloring. An interesting and not surprising result for most goldfish keepers.
The talk ended with a spirited question and answer period that lasted nearly 20-minutes.