Home-made fish food.

[Chibils]

I'm making my own food tomorrow; what do you guys advise? I'll be adding (assuming I can find all this): silversides, shrimp, clams, frozen mysis, frozen cyclops, romaine, spinach, nori, ogo, whole garlic cloves, Brightwell Aquatics Vitamarin-M (multivitamin) & Vitamarin-C (pure ascorbic acid/vit c). Can anyone think of anything else to add? I plan to drop it in a blender, pour it in bags, press them flat and freeze them so I can snap off pieces for feeding.

I also don't know how much of everything to use. I think the main ingredients will be silversides, shrimp, clams, nori, and ogo (in that order?).
Are there any conflicts, anything I'm forgetting?

 

[adtravels]

I would omit the silversides, I dont trust themand the romaine and spinach, nori will be fine, fresh oysters are recommended coral food, as they posess anti vibrio properties, some good quality flake and or crushed pellets may be good.

Thats what goes in my fish and coral (bornemanns) food.

 

[yellowslayer13]

also i have heard of people putting the muti vito Centrum in their food

 

[BangkokMatt]

You can pretty much emit most of the flesh in that recipe and just use scallop and clam. Both have far more nutritional value than anything else listed.
As Adtravels stated, fresh oysters are also good to add. I would also avoid any land grown vegetation and just add nori. As for the garlic, finely grate it and squeeze it through a fine mesh to extract the essence.
I tend to add a lot of cyclopeze to mine as well.
Good choice of vitamin supplements (you can also add some selcon)

 

[Chibils]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12708157#post12708157 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by BangkokMatt
You can pretty much emit most of the flesh in that recipe and just use scallop and clam. Both have far more nutritional value than anything else listed.
As Adtravels stated, fresh oysters are also good to add. I would also avoid any land grown vegetation and just add nori. As for the garlic, finely grate it and squeeze it through a fine mesh to extract the essence.
I tend to add a lot of cyclopeze to mine as well.
Good choice of vitamin supplements (you can also add some selcon)

Thanks, Matt; I tend to avoid land-veg, but spinach and romaine have a lot of nutrients and there's very little selection in algaes here (even at whole foods/organic markets I can't find nori). Should I bother to toss a little shrimp in there but stick mostly to scallop, clam, and oyster? I think I have a whole brick of frozen cyclops I can add.

 

[gunnwong]

I think mysis, clam, oyster, scalop, krill and nori that should be good enough. U can add all the garlic and vitamin when u ready to feed the fish. But if u want to go fancy on the recipe then I suggest follow Rod's recipe. He put a lot of stuff in his fish food that can feed both coral and fish.

 

[gunnwong]

also the stuff that don't need to use blender such as cyclops and oyster's egg can be add at the time of feeding. I just don't like the idea of taking frozen food to defost and then refoze again, that will destroy a lot of good stuff in them.

 

[yellowslayer13]

don't do shrimp it fouls the water easily

 

[Chibils]

Any recommendations on where to get nori and ogo?

 

[BangkokMatt]

You can get sushi nori from regular and asian supermarkets . Make sure you get the unseasoned variety.
Or...LFS will stock more expensive algae marketed for fish keepers but the Nori from the supermarket is fine.

 

[snorvich]

In your locale most of the large supermarkets will have it under specialty or ethnic food sections. Far less expensive than getting it through an LFS.

 

[Chibils]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12714672#post12714672 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by BangkokMatt
You can get sushi nori from regular and asian supermarkets . Make sure you get the unseasoned variety.
Or...LFS will stock more expensive algae marketed for fish keepers but the Nori from the supermarket is fine.

Our supermarkets (Kroger and Publix) don't carry it. When I ask, they look at me like I'm crazy and I can't find it under ethnic, specialty, or seafood sections. I don't know of any asian markets around here. :/

 

[stykthyn]

publix has the sushi bars, ask the guys back there if you can buy a few sheets of seaweed wrap.

 

[tangafish]

Nori will be in the oriental food section at your local grocery store generally. you can also get it at walmart for a couple dollars.

 

[thor32766]

You can also order it online from asian stores. Done it a ton of times.

 

[Chibils]

Thanks.

 

[myerst2]

I would recommend making your food into a gel based food food rather then just freezing it flat. That way you you don't lose any of the vitamins and nutrients that are in the food. When you add a frozen food with vitamins, you can visibly see the cloud of supplements make a cloud in the water. Whereas the gel based food you will lose nothing and this type of food is used by top breeders, i.e RFC and top aquariums, i.e. Waikiki. Regards, Tim Binding agents used are plain gelatin.

 

[triggerfish1976]

I agree 100% with Tim. The gel food he is speaking of is the best.

A few other misconceptions about food that I have learned that might help you:

1. Nori is overrated for mixed foods. It is healthy but I never recommend feeding herbivores nori as the main plant food supplement because fish sometimes have a tendancy to waste away on a Nori diet. Try and find some highly concentrated Spirulina flake (over 90%) or go to a health food store and get Spirulina powder and mix it with your food, its much better for your fish than Nori.

2. Be careful of feeding high concentrations of Cyclopeze to Pygmy Angels and Surgeonfish. A friend recently showed me documentation that leads me to believe that these fishes digestive systems have difficulty breaking down Cyclopeze and it can eventually lead to the death of the fish if it is fed over a long period of time. I will try and scan in the verbiage and post it.

 

[BangkokMatt]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12720562#post12720562 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by triggerfish1976

Be careful of feeding high concentrations of Cyclopeze to Pygmy Angels and Surgeonfish. A friend recently showed me documentation that leads me to believe that these fishes digestive systems have difficulty breaking down Cyclopeze and it can eventually lead to the death of the fish if it is fed over a long period of time. I will try and scan in the verbiage and post it.

Please do.

 

[Chibils]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12721115#post12721115 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by BangkokMatt
Please do.

Agreed, I'm very interested.

I'm trying to find more than just nori as I agree - feeding carnivores on brine alone doesn't make any sense. However, I scoured four supermarkets today and found freeze-dried nori in one. They had one package, so I grabbed it. One supermarket didn't even have oriental food beyond the brand name microwave-able stuff.

I'm going to a nice farmer's market tomorrow (the one you see Alton Brown shoping at in Good Eats whenever he's at a market ), and I'm sure they'll have plenty. It's a great place, but a bit out of the way. I'll pick up some fresh squid, oysters, mussels, and clams while I'm there.


So for gel-binding it, I just need to add gelatin? How much? How would I prepare it?