food for thought LOL

7

75GalNBama

New member
Hey everyone I have been talking to a lot of people online about Rod's food, it is a complete reef feeding system. From everyone I have talked to as well as the research I have done it sounds like great food. I talked to Tammy today about carrying it. She is going to check it out.
It sure would be great to get a local supplier

Thanks
Chuck
 
The stuff is very expensive, though. It's like $20 for 6 ounces of it.

Here's its ingredients:

Shrimp, scallop, oyster, clam, Squid, octopus, enriched brine, krill, mysis, grouper, Frozen Red Plankton, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, Red Nori, green nori, selco, garlic, Golden pearls (all sizes), DTs oyster eggs, nutra rose powder, fresh hatched brine, fresh harvested rotifers.

You can get a lot of these ingredient yourself from a supermarket or an Asian market. It will make a great club activity. If everybody brings a different ingredient (just a few pieces or an ounce of it), you can grind them all up in a food processor and then divide them up into individual ziplock bags.

Tomoko
 
Yes a bit spendy, but $20 verses grinding my own, plus you are feeding the whole reefa pinch at a time. Money well spent to me.
 
I talked to Rod at MACNA quite a bit about his product. He's has around five different blends now. He still thinks that the original is the best though. I have a portion of my freezer full of the stuff. My fish like it.

I agree with Tomoko. It's can be a headache to do yourself but as a club activity I think it would prove worthwhile.

You can get a lot of the supplies from brineshrimpdirect.com
 
My main problem with DIY is I always end up with enough food for about 2 years, which wouldn't be so bad if it didn't freezer burn.
 
there's an oriental market on Jordan just north of 565...a 1lb+ bag of mixed seafood is like $5...i added garlic and (something else i cant remember) and blended it, freezed it flat in a quart bag, then broke it with a hammer. my anemones love it--sometimes they just eat the frozen chunks (which cant be good!). clowns love it too...the snails even come racing out of the sand!
 
Sounds like its got everything.. I dont know though when I do feed oyster eggs I always target feed them to my sps. I've read where people just dumping into their tank end up have water quality issues. I'm not a huge fan of the grinded up food.. Seems like a lot of it doesn't get eaten.

I dont really make my own food, But I do just mix stuff up.. I buy Krill, Mysis, Rotifers, and squid all in the large slabs. I then just take a little bit of each and stick in my feeding cup add some Garlic and some Vitamin C. I also keep a few premixed foods like Prime Reef. I stick a cube or two of one of those into the mix to. I use that mix for a couple days till its gone then do it again, Or if I'm lazy or busy I just feed flake food. Seems to work well for me. IMO I think fish are pretty easy lol. They dont' seem to care. I know several people that feed nothing but flake and everything does fine. I feed frozen just cause I think its more natural food. Plus I like to target feet my corals sometimes. I feed my Anemones and my eel Raw shrimp. I buy it frozen in large bags.. I set aside 20 or so shrimp then we eat the rest :)
 
One of the other reasons Rods food is popular is that a little goes a long way. Same thing like Will talked about. It more like a diy mixture. There are no/minimal fillers, gelatin, waste water (full of nitrates and phosphates)....

Again, something that could be replicated in a DIY batch.

Rod completely agreed that this something anyone could make. Getting the big list of ingredients to make the same (or similar) mixture is just not practical for one person. That is unless you were doing it for fun instead of big cost savings for a good quality mix.

Freezer burn was an issue that came to mind for me as well Nicole.

A solution would be someone in NARC having a 'Foodsaver' type of vacuum machine. This would greatly extend the usable life of the food before it went bad.

I really don't know how inclusion or exclusion of water (total water % of food) would affect freezer burn. I'd like to hear anyone's input if they have any idea regarding the matter.

Tomoko, You can have a sample packet if you want to analyze for particle sizes or whatever else you would want. All you need is a transport method from B-ham to Madison.
 
Freezer burn is not really affected by water content. Of course, there's absolutely nothing wrong, unsafe or less nutritious about freezer burned food. But it sure doesn't taste as good. The fish will eat it anyway, but they are less enthusiastic. (Except for clowns, which eat anything...)
 
I made up some DIY frozen food the other day. I had a couple of large scallop, three clams and some squid from Seafood department plus commercially packaged frozen mysis, brine shrimp, krill and cyclopeeze. I only cut up those from the Seafood department. I froze them to kill any parasites and bacteria in the fresh seafood and for the ease of cutting in food processor. Then I semi defrost the commercial food and mix them all up. This way they are not all ground up in tiny bits.

If you want to use frozen seafood mix from an Asian market, I suggest that you read the label carefully since they often contain cooked seafood such as precooked mussels, octopus and shrimp.

Tomoko
 
Im in with buying already made it's hard to get the ingredients in such small quanity here and I dont want my house stinking for days like that either.
 
I've heard many good review of Rod's food for the past few years and I was tempted to get it, but $20 for 6 oz is a rather hefty price for such a small amount.

I looked at my 4 oz package of mysis and it's really small. A 6 oz package would be like a bar of soap. I wonder how long that would last if you have a few big fish....

However, if a few of you can do a group buy from Rod's food (up in Chicago area) or from places like Marine Depot, you can spread the shipping cost over a few of you. When I talked to an LFS in the past about carrying it, I did not get a good response. I suspect that they don't want to get stuck with a bunch of expensive frozen fish food.

In the mean time, my fish seem to be happy with my concoction. Fresh seafood does not smell, by the way. However, the variety out of supermarket seafood department is not good. I wish I had a Sushi chef in the club who can supply left over tidbits for a DIY Rod's food making party....

Tomoko
 
I gotta agree -- if the fish food is stinking up your house, you need fresher ingredients! I miss having a good fish monger around. Supermarket seafood tends to be pretty old. And the fish monger never minded when I came in and bought one scallop, one mussel...

Rod was at MACNA and giving away free samples. We tried feeding some of it to the baby fish in the MOFIB booth and they went crazy over it. Fish always do the same thing for my homemade food when it's fresh.
 
Did someone call? Getting leftovers is not a problem but having time to make meetings is. Working in a restaraunt doesn't leave me much time, especially on the weekends.
 
Too bad that you are down in Birmingham, too. I would have come over to pick them up in person. I guess I have to recruit a sushi chef up here...

Tomoko
 
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