DIY Food Recipe

[Floyd R Turbo]

Our local club gets together a couple times a year and makes a batch of DIY food. I just came across this old thread by Eric Borneman

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=176530

And it got me thinking. Maybe there's one of these threads on here (I'm sure there is, somewhere) but I wanted to post the current recipe that we are using and get some feedback from the larger community, as we are preparing to do another batch pretty soon.

So, here it is:

3 lb Cod Filets
4 lb Shrimp (unsalted, uncooked)
3 lb squid
3 lb baby octopus
20 lb Bay scallops ("dry" not "wet", dry has Phosphates injected)
16 oz Hikari Jumbo Krill
32 oz Hikari Spirulina Brine Shrimp
16 oz Hikari Bloodworms
300g NLS 2mm Pellets
150g NLS 3mm Pellets
6 bar (2.5 oz each) Argent Cyclopeeze
120 oz PE Mysis Shrimp
3 0.75 oz cans BRS Reef Chili
1 30g Two Little Fishies ZoPlan
1 30g Two Little Fishies PhytoPlan
1 56g Coral Frenzy
0.5 lb or so of raw oysters
about 20 or so sheets of UNROASTED sushi nori
3 60mL bottle Selcon
1 4 oz bottle Kent Marine C
3 1oz bottles Kent Garlic Extreme

What we do it chop up the seafood into chunks (it all gets blended, so a quick chop does OK) except the bay scallops since they're small and soft anyways and then rinse a lot, then let all that soak in a bucket of RO/DI water for a while (30-45 minutes) and pour off the nasty water.

We rinse the PE mysis very thoroughly (tap water) and soaking this might not hurt.

After the seafood is drained, we threw in the Krill (just a quick rinse) and about 1/2 the PE mysis. Then you get a couple of blenders and start blending the seafood down to the desired consistency. This takes a while and is hard on the blenders so we use cheap ones or old ones and expect a burnout (keep a fire extinguisher handy. Not kidding). We also have used a good food processor and this does not seem to get as heavily taxes.

So now we've got a nice seafood slurry and you add all the other ingredients except the Nori and the NLS pellets (they absorb water quickly) while stirring it using a paint mixer and a good quality drill (it will tax the drill). Add a little (very little) RODI if it's too thick. We poured the bloodworms through a fine net and did a quick rinse, but I can't recall if we did that with the spirulina brine shrimp but definitely not the cyclopeeze.

Blend up the oysters for several minutes on the highest setting, until it is pretty much liquid, and mix that in.

Chop up the nori into about 1" squares, roughly, or just tear it up into pieces. While stirring with the drill, add this in at kind of a constant rate, same with the NLS pellets. Once that's all mixed together, then fill up 1 qt ziplock bags and lay then flat in the freezer. I put pieces of cardboard between each bag to try and keep them the same thickness throughout, works OK. I think we did 12 or 14oz per bag. Made about 60-75 bags IIRC. All the ingredients filled a 5g bucket almost right to the top so is was a lot. Worked out to about $10/bag and we got all the frozen prepared fish food at a deep discount (like 32% off, basically at cost) from our local fish store that is a club sponsor.

Afterthoughts:

- We ended up using a huge pack of nori, like 100 sheets, because that's all they had in unroasted, I think it was too much.

- The octopus tends to make skimmers go crazy I guess, but no one complained about that, so could do without it. Those and the squid are a PITA to cut up anyways.

- Someone suggested adding shelled peas also

- I had someone tell me that Bloodworms shouldn't be fed to marine fish. Not sure about that one.

We got the shrimp and then discovered it was salted. Hasn't seemed to affect anything, but it should have been avoided. We just rinsed it extra good. We got the jumbo shrimp and we peeled it, but someone suggested using popcorn shrimp next time so we might do 1/2 and 1/2. Also someone suggested not peeling the shrimp, something about how the shell might be beneficial, not sure about that one.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Also here's another recipe that was used in another city within our club

1 oz. PhytoPlan(dry)
1 oz. ZoPlan(dry)
1 oz. Coral Frenzy(dry)
.5 oz Decapsulated Brine Shrimp
10 oz. Marine Snow
2 oz. Selcon(liquid)
80 oz. Small Mysis Shrimp(frozen)
32 oz. Jumbo Mysis Shrimp(frozen)
16 oz. Krill(frozen)
8 oz. Rotifers(frozen)
8 oz. Squid(frozen)
750 grams Cyclop-eeze
16 oz. Fresh Shrimp
8 oz. Fresh Mussel
8 oz. Fresh Oyster
8 oz. Fresh Scallops
2 Packages of nori
Medium bag of frozen peas
Medium bag of frozen/diced broccoli
1/2 Bag of fresh spinach
1 head of fresh garlic


Here's what we did at our demo about a year and a half ago. I thought the stuff was pretty awesome. I remember reading brine shrimp and blood worms aren't as good for saltwater fish as they are in freshwater, not sure, but something to think about. Also, the octopus will make skimmers go crazy and overfill sometimes, so be careful how much you use, I just chose to leave it out. I wish we could have found some fish eggs for ours, sometimes you can talk to hatcheries to get a 5 gallon bucket of eggs for cheap. All of your other ingredients look good, you can check out my list to see others to add like peas, spinach, broccoli, etc.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

And some feedback I got on the local forum

The only thing I would add is you want to keep the shell on for the shrimp, just cut the tail off. This is especially important for your fish. In the wild they eat the whole shrimp. Also make sure the shrimp are not devined. There is nutritional value in the intestines and shells of the shrimp.

me:

Really? I would have never though to leave the shell on the shrimp. I would think that hard pieces like that would cause intestinal blockage or something. Except maybe for larger or more aggressive fish. Even blending will leave the occasional large chunk of shell. What am I missing?

Have never had an issue with the shells. There may be a large piece or so left but most get ground up when you mix the food. We have all different size fish eating our food from anthias to large triggers and puffers. We grind the food quite small and then use gelatin to bind everything together. That way the larger fish still get what they need and the smaller fish are able to get size appropriate pieces. There is a lot of calcium and trace minerals in the shell and also chitin which is found to be very beneficial to humans as well.

 

[Fish Bowl]

Hopefully you don't mind me chiming in with my recipe
My own DIY food consist of:
2 lbs of Shelled Shrimp
1 lb of Scallops (Asian markets have the small frozen ones for dirt cheap)
1 lb of Live Little Neck Clams
1 lb of Live Prince Edward Island Mussels
~4-8 oz of Wild Salmon Meat (leftover from the bones and skin when I fillet them to eat)
~2-4 oz of Maine Lobster head meat when we have lobster (No one in my family ever eats the head meat so why waste it?)
~ 4-6 oz Red Gracilaria
1 TBSP Spirulina Powder
1 TBSP Kelp Powder
Agar Agar to thicken (So it's grateable/chopable while retaining shape moderately)

I add a vitamin supplement/HUFA supplement in highly varying amounts depending on when I separate each batch (I add less for certain tanks and more for others)
For those I tend to use Reef Plus or Zoe along with Selcon or Zoecon or Fish/Krill Oil (from the gel capsules)

As mentioned previously, after the food is made and left to set, it's then frozen and then either grated or chopped to proper sizes depending on what I want to feed.

As for the lack of garlic, I only use garlic as a fish enticement (newcomers/training) and avoid it otherwise due to an article mentioning the negative affects on their internal organs in the long run.

 

[Agu]

20 lb Bay scallops ("dry" not "wet", dry has Phosphates injected)

I think you meant to post "....wet has phosphates ....' ?

"Wet" seafood is called wet when phosphate is used to retard spoilage. Typically it's used on fresh, never frozen seafood. Vendors don't mind using phosphate because it causes the food to absorb more water making it heavier. That's why it's called "wet".

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Oh dang it!!! Good catch, that's exactly what I meant!

 

[EnderG60]

adding water to the fillets and other raw food will make it blend MUCH easier.

 

[mwilliams62]

DIY Food Recipe

Our local club gets together a couple times a year and makes a batch of DIY food. I just came across this old thread by Eric Borneman

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=176530

And it got me thinking. Maybe there's one of these threads on here (I'm sure there is, somewhere) but I wanted to post the current recipe that we are using and get some feedback from the larger community, as we are preparing to do another batch pretty soon.

So, here it is:

3 lb Cod Filets
4 lb Shrimp (unsalted, uncooked)
3 lb squid
3 lb baby octopus
20 lb Bay scallops ("dry" not "wet", dry has Phosphates injected)
16 oz Hikari Jumbo Krill
32 oz Hikari Spirulina Brine Shrimp
16 oz Hikari Bloodworms
300g NLS 2mm Pellets
150g NLS 3mm Pellets
6 bar (2.5 oz each) Argent Cyclopeeze
120 oz PE Mysis Shrimp
3 0.75 oz cans BRS Reef Chili
1 30g Two Little Fishies ZoPlan
1 30g Two Little Fishies PhytoPlan
1 56g Coral Frenzy
0.5 lb or so of raw oysters
about 20 or so sheets of UNROASTED sushi nori
3 60mL bottle Selcon
1 4 oz bottle Kent Marine C
3 1oz bottles Kent Garlic Extreme

What we do it chop up the seafood into chunks (it all gets blended, so a quick chop does OK) except the bay scallops since they're small and soft anyways and then rinse a lot, then let all that soak in a bucket of RO/DI water for a while (30-45 minutes) and pour off the nasty water.

We rinse the PE mysis very thoroughly (tap water) and soaking this might not hurt.

After the seafood is drained, we threw in the Krill (just a quick rinse) and about 1/2 the PE mysis. Then you get a couple of blenders and start blending the seafood down to the desired consistency. This takes a while and is hard on the blenders so we use cheap ones or old ones and expect a burnout (keep a fire extinguisher handy. Not kidding). We also have used a good food processor and this does not seem to get as heavily taxes.

So now we've got a nice seafood slurry and you add all the other ingredients except the Nori and the NLS pellets (they absorb water quickly) while stirring it using a paint mixer and a good quality drill (it will tax the drill). Add a little (very little) RODI if it's too thick. We poured the bloodworms through a fine net and did a quick rinse, but I can't recall if we did that with the spirulina brine shrimp but definitely not the cyclopeeze.

Blend up the oysters for several minutes on the highest setting, until it is pretty much liquid, and mix that in.

Chop up the nori into about 1" squares, roughly, or just tear it up into pieces. While stirring with the drill, add this in at kind of a constant rate, same with the NLS pellets. Once that's all mixed together, then fill up 1 qt ziplock bags and lay then flat in the freezer. I put pieces of cardboard between each bag to try and keep them the same thickness throughout, works OK. I think we did 12 or 14oz per bag. Made about 60-75 bags IIRC. All the ingredients filled a 5g bucket almost right to the top so is was a lot. Worked out to about $10/bag and we got all the frozen prepared fish food at a deep discount (like 32% off, basically at cost) from our local fish store that is a club sponsor.

Afterthoughts:

- We ended up using a huge pack of nori, like 100 sheets, because that's all they had in unroasted, I think it was too much.

- The octopus tends to make skimmers go crazy I guess, but no one complained about that, so could do without it. Those and the squid are a PITA to cut up anyways.

- Someone suggested adding shelled peas also

- I had someone tell me that Bloodworms shouldn't be fed to marine fish. Not sure about that one.

We got the shrimp and then discovered it was salted. Hasn't seemed to affect anything, but it should have been avoided. We just rinsed it extra good. We got the jumbo shrimp and we peeled it, but someone suggested using popcorn shrimp next time so we might do 1/2 and 1/2. Also someone suggested not peeling the shrimp, something about how the shell might be beneficial, not sure about that one.

Man sounds like you are feeding the entire Ocean.... LOL
Seriously though that is a lot of food how many fish are you feeding?


This is how I make my DIY recipes:
I use the following:

1/2lb raw shrimp (least expensive ones)
5-10 claims (in shell)
4 - Squid tubes
10 mussels (in the shell)
3-4 jumbo bay scallops (those suckers are expensive)
Spinach
Broccoli
Nori Sheets
Cylop-Eeze (liquid kind in the packets) made by Instant Ocean
Selcon
Vitamin C. (Kent)

While blending the shrimp in the food processer I put the claims & mussels to boil once the shells have opened I take them out of the boiling water and put them into food processer with the shrimp and blend then I use a spatula to spoon out mixture into a bowl.
Next I boil the broccoli till very tender and the tiny little heads come off the stalks. With my fingers I roll the stalks around till all those tiny little heads come off into the bowl were the mixture is at.
Then boil the spinach for a short while blend in food processer very shortly do not over blend then spoon out into the bowl
Next I blend the squid tubes they are tough so I let it blend until smooth sometimes I have to add a little bit of water then I spoon it out into the same bowl.
Stir together then I squeeze into the mixture the Cyclop-Eeze (liquid form in little packets) made by Instant Ocean. I use about 8 packets.
Next I just crumble up the Nori Sheets into the mixture and stir around.
Then I put in about 1-tsp. Selcon and 1-tsp. of Vitamin C probably not putting enough in not sure how much I am supposed to be putting in. Then I stir again making sure all is mixed very well.
Next I spoon the mixture into a one or two gallon zip-lock baggies and use either my hands are a rolling pen over it to thin it out and lay it flat in the freezer for about 1 hour then I get the bag and fold it in half so it won't take up so much room in the freezer.

 

[ivans75]

Just to chime in my point of view, got nothing against DIYers but I dont favor DIY food they make fish food becomes more expensive plus you never know how much x you need before you risk contaminating the water...especially those who are using a commercial fish food as an ingredient for the fish food you are making. Using a good quality fish food is more than enough I suppose, less hassle, no smelly hands/utensils, less work...but again...theres no limit in this hobby.

Agreed that phosphate may be the disadvantage of commercially prepared fish food but I believe as long as you know what to do (be wise on feeding your fish plus u got a good running system), it will not be a problem as your filtration and your established bacteria colony would just filter it out of the equation.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Tell that to my customers who like to feed about 3-5 cubes per day so they have great looking corals and nice fat happy fish but don't want to spend $80/month on food. I see your point of view but I wholeheartedly disagree. I can make my own food and feed a tank as heavily as it's filter can take (and I run an Algae Scrubber, so that's a lot of food) for easily 1/4 the cost.

That being said, I didn't start this thread to debate whether it was or was not a good idea to make your own food. You either are going to do it or not, for whatever reason you see fit.

Back to the OT:

Fish Bowl and mwilliams, you both have mussels and clams in your recipe. I don't, because of this reason posted on this site

http://home.wavecable.com/~jrowe/DIY Fish Food Procedure.htm

Another thing to note is that I also remove clams and mussels from the mixed seafood I get at the Asian store. The reason for this is that I don't want my fish getting a taste for clams, and both clams and mussels have a high waste to protein content. They are practically half (expletive).

That's also a pretty good recipe BTW.

Fish Bowl, can you provide me a link re: long term garlic use?

 

[jefstathiou]

I, too would like to read that article. I was led to believe to the contrary that adding garlic was a good additive for the health of fish. Hope I was not misled as I have been doing so for some time now.

 

[Fish Bowl]

I, too would like to read that article. I was led to believe to the contrary that adding garlic was a good additive for the health of fish. Hope I was not misled as I have been doing so for some time now.

I also would love to think that garlic is good for my fish (since all the old food mixes/pellets I use had loads of it)

Here's the articles:
http://www.ajol.info/index.php/ejb/article/view/29978
http://www.springerlink.com/content/w1g55h5463225648/

The nice thing about it is though, at least I can use all the garlic for myself

@Floyd R Turbo
Maybe that's why my Gracilaria grows so well
On a more serious note though, I would think that in some cases having bivalves in there would be more beneficial to attracting certain species to eat along with giving them different nutrient profiles in their diet (I forgot what clams are high in besides cholesterol, but mussels have a good amount of thiamin in them)

@ivans75
Not to sound offensive, but how is DIY food expensive?
You can get a pretty good mix (by weight ratio) for not that much.
In my area you can get Mussels for 2.99 per lb (yielding roughly 2/3rds of that as meat), 5lb box of ecuador shrimp for 9.99, Clams for 2.99 per lb (yielding roughly 1/2 of that as meat) 1.5 lbs of frozen bay scallops for 5 (they're ultra tiny) and already you have a pretty good seafood medley to blend.
All together that cost 21 dollars for about 4.5 lbs of food vs 50 for a 5 lb bucket of NLS (Your probably not going to use all 5 lbs of shrimp so might as well eat it yourself )
If you want to add spirulina and kelp powder, 1 lb of spirulina is about 25 dollars and then kelp powder is like 12 for 1 lb (in all cases you'll mostly be using .5oz per batch = 4 centsish per batch)

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Thanks for the articles...will check them out

I think he was saying that by DIYing our own food, commercially prepared food like Rod's or Roggers, etc is in less demand and then becomes more expensive. It's a stretch if you ask me. 90%+ of people don't make their own food.

 

[mwilliams62]

I thought that the garlic was to help the fish with their immune systems and to get them to eat for the pickey eaters..... I do know garlic helps our immune systems that I can vouch for because I had to use it when nother else worked on me for over the counter & prescription medicaion for my upper respitory infection and within 1wk it was gone. So I would like to think if it can help us it should help them as well.... IMO

I have compared prices from Rod's here in Houston one small package 8oz cost about $17.99 when I make my own food for them for $20-$25 at the most and that yeilds for me 2-Gallon zip lock baggies.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

I don't know about you, but my food doesn't contain enough garlic to dose 2g per kg of fish in the tank. I used 3 oz of Garlic Extreme, which is about 85g, and mixed that in to a batch that made over 80 bags of food all together. So that's 1g per 12 oz or 340g of food, which easily lasts 30 days feeding very heavily (5 cubes/day or thereabout) so that's a total of 0.033 grams (1/30 gram) of Garlic Extreme per day, for all the fish in the tank, which probably total 1 kg, MAYBE 1.5 kg. So that's at worst 1/60th of what they are dosing, and they're probably dosing pure garlic juice versus some undoubtedly watered-down aquarium product. I have no doubt that if I force-fed my fish 60x the amount of garlic that I currently am, that they would undoubtedly develop problems.

I'm not worried....

 

[el aguila]

I know that some people put in items for corals to feed on. Considering that most corals typically feed when lights are out, would we be better to add these at night if we are interested in feeding our corals?

I believe that any daytime feeding corals will find benefits from most basic food mixes because there will typically be some particles that are smaller.

This is just an unsubstaniated opinion - any feedback from those who have experience either way?

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

So true.

 

[bruce 1]

I make my own food also. It is very easy. I buy at Sam's Club a 5 lb bag of frozen sea food gumbo. It is $12.69 for the lb bag. It has a good mixture of seafood in it. I then add Kent Marine C, some Garlic Extreme. My fish love it. I tested feeding them this and rods food, they went after mine better than the rods. I make mine into small cubes just like you would buy. I took some egg crate and cut it to fit in a cookie sheet, then I fill up the voids with the blended food, freeze it and then just push out each cube of food and zip lock bag it. Makes a ton of food and fish love it and it is cheep.

One question, I seen where some rinse it before they freeze it, should I start doing this?

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

I posted this step. After thawing and rough-chopping the seafood, soak it in RO/DI water for a while, 30 minutes minimum, some do it for longer. Pour off the water and smell it and you will understand why you want to do this.

Then blend/food process everything together and freeze.

 

[bruce 1]

Thank you. I am going to make some new tonight.