It’s the time of year when the leaves are falling and we are all starting to think of Christmas, it only seems like 5 minutes ago that there was a heatwave and we couldn’t use a hosepipe in the garden!

Before you start planning your festivities though, please spare a thought for your pond as this is a very important time of the year for your fish’s health.

If you haven’t already you should be starting to switch over to lower protein fish food, this is just easier to digest as your fish’s metabolism starts to slow down. It is a common myth in the pond industry that higher protein foods rot inside a fish’s stomach and that’s the reason to switch over to wheatgerm.

The actual reason for switching to Wheatgerm Pond Food is that your filtration system's performance will have started to reduce in autumn, therefore you need less ammonia going into the pond so that you don’t affect the water quality!

Here is an analysis of one of our more popular brands of wheatgerm that we stock at Bradshaws Direct.

So what actually is Wheatgerm?

Wheat Germ or Wheatgerm is becoming a very on trend product that is used in more and more health products that you may start seeing on supermarket shelves! Wheatgerm is a source of several essential nutrients that includes: Vitamin E, Folate (folic acid), phosphorous, thiamine, zinc and magnesium. There are also essential fatty acids and fatty alcohols. Wheatgerm is a very good source of fibre, it is added to protein shakes, muffins, pancakes, cereals, yogurts, smoothies, cookies and many other goods.

I would look more to your health food shops rather than our aisles if you are taking up baking though!

However it has got me thinking, if we could maybe bake cookies as a koi treat, maybe a post for another time…

I think another mention for a good food at this time of year is the Nishkikoi Health Food, this is brilliant to be fed to ‘Over Winter’ your fish.