Eric's "famous" coral food recipe

Hi Eric. I am just knew to this forum and this hooby. I am wondering what your thoughts are on a product called "Amino-Vital" I just purchased a "Hammer Coral" and the fella at the LFS said this would be good for the coral. Do I need this or is it just adding extra stuff into the tank?

Thanks
Andy
 
Reefdude3 said:
What's the best type of fish to use, not only for blender mush, but in general. Is Hadock good? What about talibut? Does it need to be saltwater, or will catfish work? Oily or non oily? WHite or non white? Is there even a general consensus? Anyone's opionions would be great, obviously including Eric's
Click to expand...

I would use non-oily, especially if you use a skimmer. Fats in the water will decrease skimmer performance.

Personally I like to use tiny fish and blend them in whole hoping this will provide more nutrition than just the filet.

Last time I used Shishamo, the pregnant smelt served in Japanese restaurants. First I cut out the eggs, blend the body and then add the eggs to the mixture when the blending is done.
 
Eric,

When you freeze in sheets, do you just break off the frozen chuncks and put it in the water? Defrost in saltwater first? I ask because I have a 20g with 3 striped damsels and 1 clown. I've had it for 3 years. I am adding coral next week and hope to get an anemone someday. I don't want to put too much stuff in there. Should I try and freeze things into little pellets instead?

Thanks,
Anne
 
Eric,
That is great info for someone new like me. I have three questions:

1) Is there a special mix you have for the fish or does it work for both?

2) How much of the mix do you break off and feed them?

3) How often do you feed?

Thsnks
Tim
 
Would canned herring roe be suitable? The only contents are herring roe and water.
 
A quick question about the feeding targets for this recipe. I have three main tanks. One dedicated to mostly soft corals and gorgonians, another is mostly LPS, and the third is (in progress) going to be SPS mainly. This recipe sounds really good for the SPS and LPS tanks, and possibly for the gorgonians, but would it be any good at all for most of the soft corals? It sounds like it would certainly stimulate the pods, and other good things about the tank, but I'm wondering if there would be any direct benefit to a soft coral. My understanding is that they just don't capture prey that big. (generally speaking of course, I know "soft corals" is a big group).

Also.. with funny blender stories.. I was once making a concoction similar to this with a bag of frozen seafood mix from the store. I discovered (violently) that it contained whole cuttlefish, when it put one right through the side of the blender. :) My wife nearly killed me for the resulting kitchen mess, and promptly bought me my own blender.
 
Hi Eric,
I have been using a variation of your food recipe for quite a while and I am very satisfied with the results. The real difference with what I make is that I leave out any form of commercial food (flake or granule).
The reason why I exclude it is because a few years ago I had a length battle with phosphates and eventually traced it down to the commercial food I was using at the time. This problem went away when I switched to this version of your recipe. Years later, I still cannot bring myself to include it.
Did you have any such concerns at first?
 
You can certainly add or leave out ingredients. Recently, I have become very fond of the oyster eggs that Dennis Tagrin s using is providing at DT's plankton farm...amazingly dense and small food source. Definitely avoid anything that seriously degrades water quality. Shoot, hatch some Artemia and then freeze them in the mix, too.

I also feel that the bllenderizing process produces food particlesof such various sizes that virtually everythign gets something out of the mx.
On the amino acids, I can offer the following very informative link...also very infomative in terms of "prophylactic dips" to rid potentially opportunistic pathogens following stressful events like shipping. It will tell you just how effective or necessary amino acids are to corals - at least the corals studied. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9078264&dopt=Abstract

This article used to be available as full text online, but I cannit find it anymore. The abstract is quite informative though, and I would send a .pdf to anyone interested in the full article.

Eric
 
michaelg said:
Eric- you forgot the second part of the disclaimer in the fish recipe- that you are not accountable for any resulting divorces/whaps upside the head- after the spouse sees, smells, and realizes you used the margahrita blender.
Click to expand...

Or realizes that you used his toothbrush to clean your refugium... or that you are cultivating copepods on his night stand.... :eek:



I was wondering if feeding enriched live baby brine shrimp is any different (better/worse) than feeding frozen. I know that when it comes to fish, live foods can make them more agressive... is there a similar thing with aggressive corals? So would a brain coral's sweeper tenacles start reaching out more for live food? I also wondered if live baby brine would create less waste if they stayed alive until they were consumed? Or is that not an issue really?
 
Sihaya: yes live is better in terms of not polluting the tank and nutrition. But, some corals may not be able to feed well on motile prey - they swim right out of the polyps of some corals if ensnared (likely soft corals, and maybe a few stonies).

No, I don't turn off my skimmmer during feeding, but I should..and so should everyone. The reason I don't is that the skimmer pump is outside and it's too inconvenient. So I just feed more.
 
I was bored the other night and decided to dust off the blender, well I had ALOT of different fish food and I got sick of messing with it so heres what went in the blender:

some frozen Mysid
some frozen Bloodworms
lots of frozen Brine shrimp
3/4 bar of frozen cyclop-eeze
1.5 oz of vibra grow
12-16 oz of my live phytoplankton culture
that baggie of free pyto-feast flake

I made enuff food to last me for a year and the tank seems to dig it, I like having everything all in one so there is a good variety of food for all, I still feed the fish flake seperate tho, the next batch will have even more goodies thrown in, and i'm sure the LFS will enjoy me spending 100 bux on food as much as my tanks will
 
So... the only time I ever buy caviar in my life, it's not because the pope is coming to visit... but for my reef aquarium. And we wonder why people think we're crazy...
 
Just a thought might seem very dumb or some thing i dont know. I was just wondering if i had purchased a bit of raw seafoods from the asian markets if bad bacteria or anything/surroundings will have an effect with the blended foods being fed into the tank. I mean because you said the bloodier the better would they all prefer just a rinse of tap water?
thanks.
aaron.
 
If you want, but will tapwater rinsing get rid of "bad" bacteria? There might also be bad bacteria in the tap water, on your hands, on the utensils you make the food with, etc. I would hope that seafood you purchase is relatively free of pathogens, and remember that because something is a pathogen to humans does not make it a pathogen to corals/fish, andconversely, something harmless to us might be lethal to corals/fish. And, unless you plan on screening and blast sequencing every thing that goes in your tank, from dry food, to brine shrimp, to additives to room dust, skin mites, etc., then provided the seafood isn't rancid, I think its probably safe enough.
 
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