All ingredients should be properly sized for acceptance by milkfish; this means grinding fresh fish or dried fish, dried cassava, soybean cake, peanut cake, leaves, and sifting rice bran to remove the hulls. The smaller the particle size, the less steaming is necessary to form a water-stable cake, since there is more surface area for binding with cassava starch. Coconut cake should be ground or disintegrated by hand into particles by first wetting with an equal amount of water.
A mixture containing approximately 45 percent water, using ingredients passing through a 2 mm opening, steamed for 30 minutes, will remain in cake form in water for several hours, yet be soft enough for fish to graze upon, nibbling at small fragments. Wet ingredients or steamed cakes should not be left overnight without refrigeration; fresh, semi-moist food cakes should be made and fed daily. From experience, sun-dried cakes that float or that are partially fermented are not acceptable to milkfish.
