Thread: Is insect protein preferable to fish meal in Koi food?

Originally Posted by Alburglar

...and acts as a good warning to the other fish, not to be feeble.

hahahahaa that made me LOL

I used to have a rat problem. The bloody rats would dive into the pond, swim down to the bottom and grab fish! So I installed an electric perimeter wire strong enough to zap them. I hung a couple of dead rats up which got fly blown and these produced huge amounts of maggots which were greedily eaten but the maggots were full of oily rat meat. Anyway that's where I got the idea from.

It's very easy to make a fly/maggot trap that doesn't smell much. A ten or twenty litre white bucket with push on air tight lid. Put almost anything inside the bucket including fish poo or thick pond sludge or food scraps to attract flies. I drill a hole in lid and install a 15 or 20mm diameter black hose vertically with a U bend on the outside end (so it looks like an umbrella handle). The flies land on the hose, walk into the hose, going over the U bend and down into the bucket where they can eat - mate and lay eggs but then can't find their way out. They only want to fly into the light, not dark. If you have wet food inside, a bit of sawdust at the bottom is recommended to stop the flies and maggots from drowning. The air tight lid keeps the smell well contained.

To harvest, I have another short black ribbed hose sticking out the side with a slight bend to stop light. Maggots will walk their way out all by themselves. So no need to open the lid and most of the smell is contained. You can keep the bucket over the pond or put a smaller bucket to catch maggots as they drop out.

Here in sub tropical Australia, we have lots of flies and it's easy to harvest large amounts of free live food daily.