Determination of Some Engineering Properties of Floatable Fish Feed Obtained from Different Companies

Abstract

This research work presents useful information about different floatable fish feeds obtained from different companies, which serves as database for people work intensively in fish farming and help them in solving many problems associated with the feeding effectiveness and feed handling. The main objective of this project is to study some physical and mechanical properties of fish feed pellets of different sizes. These properties included; Density, Moisture content, Surface area, Floatability, Sizes, Sinking velocity, Expansion ratio, Repose angle. The actual sizes of the extruded fish feed used ranged from 3 mm to 9 mm, However, Company 1 did not have 9 mm for producing that size of the pellet. The floatability ranged from 79.51 to 98.00%, the density ranged from 0.03 to 0.08 g/cm3, the moisture content ranged from 8.94 to 29.26%, the expansion ratio ranged from 1.02 to 1.54%, the sinking velocity ranged from 0.008 to 0.1 m/s2, the repose angle ranged from 27 to 38° while the colour of the feed ranged from light to dark brown according to Tables 1, 2 and 3 respectively. The results obtained from the experiment were subjected to ANOVA test using SPSS (Special Packages for Social Science) package. The physical and Mechanical properties of the floatable fish feed obtained from these three companies were significantly different from one another.