DIY Food Recipe

[jacob.morgan78]

I've been getting ready to make my first batch of diy reef food for a while now. The latest thing I'm worried about is having enough food for the corals (lps and sps). The basic ingredient list so far includes a basic mixture of fresh or frozen seafood (shrimp, etc.), nori green and red, cyclop eeze, and selcon.

What else should I add for good coral growth? I was thinking adding something like coral frenzy or something.

Anyone have any suggestions?

 

[donald altman]

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?

I usually will clean trout that I catch in the gulf and save the roe...
I do the same thing they do with putting it into a freezer bag and laying it sideways inside the freezer.. usually about an 1/8 inch layer that I can just break a little peice off once a week or so... I will add this at night after the lights are off jsut before I go to bed. I do not use any kind of binder or additional water.. no grinding neccessary. It pretty much melts as soon as it hits teh water and you can see the individual eggs dispearse all over the tank. You can do the same thing with any fish that has roe freshwater included.

 

[el aguila]

Our biggest Charlotte oriental grocery has several different types of dried seaweeds. Anyone know which ones or combinations are best to use, or is there really much difference?

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Yes, there is a difference. You want unroasted Nori. roasted Nori has most of the beneficial nutrients cooked out of it. Most of the time you will only find unroasted nori at an Asian marketplace. I could only find it in a pack of 100 sheet but it was still like $12.

 

[el aguila]

Yes, there is a difference. You want unroasted Nori. roasted Nori has most of the beneficial nutrients cooked out of it. Most of the time you will only find unroasted nori at an Asian marketplace. I could only find it in a pack of 100 sheet but it was still like $12.

What I'm saying there is several different unroasted varieties of seaweed. I'm just wondering if one is better than the other, or our we better to put a variety in

I guess another option is to go ahead and buy several then try them out with several tangs to see what variety they like the best.

 

[jgraz]

How can you justify calling this DIY when 14 of the 21 ingredients are prepared. Your basically just mixing all the seperate foods you would normally feed and adding a bit of freash seafood and chemicals. I can get the same benefits from a mush of fresh seafood and a bit of nori or better yet go to the LFS and get a bit of Gracilera and add that to the seafood. DONE and DONE. And then I don't add any of the phospates that normally come with all that pre-packaged stuff.

 

[mwilliams62]

DIY Food Recipe

Yes, there is a difference. You want unroasted Nori. roasted Nori has most of the beneficial nutrients cooked out of it. Most of the time you will only find unroasted nori at an Asian marketplace. I could only find it in a pack of 100 sheet but it was still like $12.

Who makes the "Unroasted Nori" or brand I can only find the roasted kind?

 

[mwilliams62]

DIY Food Recipe

How can you justify calling this DIY when 14 of the 21 ingredients are prepared. Your basically just mixing all the seperate foods you would normally feed and adding a bit of freash seafood and chemicals. I can get the same benefits from a mush of fresh seafood and a bit of nori or better yet go to the LFS and get a bit of Gracilera and add that to the seafood. DONE and DONE. And then I don't add any of the phospates that normally come with all that pre-packaged stuff.

I get all of my seafood from the seafood department of my grocery store and it is not packaged. It is fresh they have to weigh it for me and they always give me a funny look when I tell them I only want three pieces of say Bay Scallops but they "the suppliers" may be putting something on them so they "shrimp/clams/scallops" to stay fresh when transporting in.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Of course that is an option. But I did not start this thread to debate why you should or should not make such a food mixture, I was just looking for other possibilities that others had used in preparing their own foods. If there was an easy way to purchase smaller amounts of raw materials to make my own coral foods or vitamins, etc, that was cost effective, then I would likely do that. However is seems a whole lot easier to just buy the foods that are prepared specifically for the industry and incorporate those rather than re-inventing the wheel.

I have been looking at buying frozen fish foods from online distributors as well. If it makes any difference, yes roughly 2/3 of the ingredients are prepared, but they account for only 1/3 of the overall weight, since the bulk of the ingredients are seafood.

The point in making this food is so that you have a whole-tank food, you can feed your fish, corals, inverts, CUC, everything with one food, instead of feeding this here and that there.

And, it is a DIY food in the respect that you could buy Rod's food, or Roggers food, which has essentially all the same ingredients, but just costs 4x as much. But we're splitting hairs here. To me, getting 12 people together for 2-3 hours and making a 5 gallon bucket of food to save 75% on cost is DIY.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Who makes the "Unroasted Nori" or brand I can only find the roasted kind?

I can't recall. Like I said in the post you quoted, it was at an asian market

 

[mwilliams62]

Okay thanks I will have to look again the next time I go to an asian store.

 

[miamiaquarium]

sounds pretty good

 

[biecacka]

i also added broccoli in mine because i couldn't find any nori and i heard it was a good substitute. the only issue i feel i had was i chopped it up "too fine" so for some of my corals........frogspawn, hammer, etc
corey

 

[xCry0x]

I put spirolina in mine, although I have been posting around about DIY food because my fish didnt go as crazy for it as I expected.

WHen you guys put this in your tank do you thaw it so it is a cloud of food particles? I feel like it makes more of a mess and most of it does not get eaten since there is a lot of food 'dust' floating around form it being emulsified.

 

[bruce 1]

My fish goes nuts over mine. I did feed Rods and changed to DIY food. They would eat the rods but they go nuts over Bruce food.

 

[jacob.morgan78]

What about this?

Latest ingredients and questions... *I thought it might help to give a list of inhabitants below. *This a 125 gallon tank that is about 8 months old. I specifically need opinions on how much Selcon, cyclop eeze, and oyster feast.

Latest thoughts and questions on Ingredients:

*1 pound of whole, uncooked frozen shrimp (deshelled)
*1 pound of assorted raw seafood (squid, clams, scallop)
6 whole sheets of seaweed 3 red 3 green
Freeze dried Cyclop-Eeze® (How much?)
Selcon (How much?)
Reef nutrition oyster feast. (How much?)

Fish and coming fish additions
Lawnmower blenny
2 clowns
2 pajama cardinal
1 Banghai cardinal (possibly a 2nd coming next)
Royal gramma
Hippo tang (coming next)
Wrasse or two (coming soon)
Yellow tang (coming soon)

Coral
Large frogspawn colony
2 frogspawn frags*
3-4 sps frags
1 larger frag or small colony of sps
Acan frag
Galaxia colony
Bubble tip anemone
2 hairy mushrooms (or ricordea idk)
Trumpet coral frag*
Zoas (~15 heads total)
White Pom Pom Xenia small colony
Duncan ~5 heads
Soft leather idk name*
Greenstar polyp rock

Thanks!!!!

 

[MarkGP]

Who makes the "Unroasted Nori" or brand I can only find the roasted kind?

Noridirect.com has the raw unroasted nori. You have to contact them to get pricing and order it. They don't list it on their website.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

WHen you guys put this in your tank do you thaw it so it is a cloud of food particles? I feel like it makes more of a mess and most of it does not get eaten since there is a lot of food 'dust' floating around form it being emulsified.

dust/cloud = coral food

What about this?

Latest ingredients and questions... *I thought it might help to give a list of inhabitants below. *This a 125 gallon tank that is about 8 months old. I specifically need opinions on how much Selcon, cyclop eeze, and oyster feast.

Latest thoughts and questions on Ingredients:

*1 pound of whole, uncooked frozen shrimp (deshelled)
*1 pound of assorted raw seafood (squid, clams, scallop)
6 whole sheets of seaweed 3 red 3 green
Freeze dried Cyclop-Eeze® (How much?)
Selcon (How much?)
Reef nutrition oyster feast. (How much?)

The blended oyster part of the original list I posted is the same thing. Oyster Feast just has Sodium Alganate (or something like that) added to keep it in suspension so why pay for that if you're going to freeze it. Just blend up raw oysters ultra-fine.

I don't use clams or mussels because I heard they're messy (posted link earlier that mentions this)

I would do the Selcon and Cyclops in ratios similar to what I posted, seems to work well.

Noridirect.com has the raw unroasted nori. You have to contact them to get pricing and order it. They don't list it on their website.

Awesome! Thanks for the link!

 

[jacob.morgan78]

The blended oyster part of the original list I posted is the same thing. Oyster Feast just has Sodium Alganate (or something like that) added to keep it in suspension so why pay for that if you're going to freeze it. Just blend up raw oysters ultra-fine.

I don't use clams or mussels because I heard they're messy (posted link earlier that mentions this)

I would do the Selcon and Cyclops in ratios similar to what I posted, seems to work well.

Thank you for the feedback!
Im under the impression that oyster feast is more than just ground oyster and is just oyster eggs and ovarian tissue. Am I wrong?

I'm trying to work out the math with your recipe but it's hard since you made so much more. Will you check my math? I used the total amount of seafood you used (13 pounds of cod, shrimp, squid, octopus) compared to the 2 pounds I'm going to use. This is what I came up with:

Per 2 pounds of seafood
About 2 oz of cyclops (how would this relate to freeze dried cyclops)
About 30 mL secon

Thanks!!

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

You forgot the 20 lb of scallops. I used ~33 lb seafood and ~45 lb overall.

180 mL of Selcon and 15 oz cyclops (frozen) so scaling back to 2 lb would be like 2/45 or roughly 0.05 (5%), or 0.75oz cyclops (1/3 of a bar) and 9 mL Selcon, or a little under 1/4 of a 60 mL bottle.