Offbreed,

Just because a food has high protein does that make it high quality. My
point is that food doesn't have to high protein to be high quality. Plus,
as I have said before, Goldfish and/or KOI do not need high protein. A good
protein level is between 28 and 35% protein. You can have high quality
foods that don't have high protein levels. This high protein, high quality
mantra that Ingrid is always touting is nothing but horse pucky and the
research does not support it, in fact, it says just the opposite that lower
protein for an omnivore is appropriate. If you were keeping salmon or trout
in your pond then 50 and 60% would be good protein levels for these fish,
but they are carnivores. Goldfish are omnivores. High quality foods are
important but this doesn't mean high protein. There are plenty of high
quality foods out there that are not high in protein.

HTH

Tom L.L.


"Offbreed" wrote in message
...
Tom La Bron wrote:

You are also right in saying the food has nothing to do with nitrates.

I'm confused. Doesn't "high quality" usually mean "high protein"?
Isn't protein high in nitrogen? I know that the manure collectors in
olden China would get better prices for human shit collected from the
rich part of town because it made better fertilizer. Seems to me that
feeding better food would actually increase the pollution problem,
even if the quantity was reduced, due to the fish having such a short
intestine (low food conversion efficiency).

Of course, a "lower" quality food would have a higher roughage content
and produce a different problem to be cleaned up. OTOH, bacteria
attacking the undigested roughage should bind nitrogen, and reduce the
nitrate problem, wouldn't it?