making your own food

[reefkprz]

today I made up a batch of my own food, and figured I could show how for whoever may not know how.
first I visited my grocers seafood section and picked out some ingredients. plus some stuff I had on hand. todays recipe consists of
scallops
mussels
quahogs (in this case little necks)
seaweed selects green marine algae
Dulse (red kelp)
omega one pellets w/garlic
ocean nutritions formula one flake
cyclopeeze
shrimp
whitefish
mysis shrimp by omega one
I toss a bit of all of the ingredients into the food processor and Puree, when using as many "dry" ingredients as I have here it may be usefull to add some RO water to thin it out a bit.
then I place in a ziplock bag and flatten it. when I place it in the freezer I generally press the bag down onto the rack to freeze ridges into the large cube to make breaking off a chunk a little easier.
then I make a second batch with all the same ingredients except the algae and kelp, for feeding my corals, as you can see in the second bag there is some of the first batch and more of thye second batch. the color difference is prominent.
there you go its really that simple. there are a multitude of other ingredients you can use to make your own food, almost anything of marine origin will work. But there are a few you should avoid, such as sword fish, herring, tuna, and salmon as they are relativly fatty or oily fish and can have a serious impact on water quality though they are good as food.
Usually I have more ingredients but there was a very limited selection today at the grocers for some reason.

 

[reefkprz]

forgot picture of the second batch....

 

[cfung]

hwo much did it all cost?

 

[reefkprz]

six dollars and change (roughly for the amounts I used) and I made about 2 times what one batch of premade frozen food costs. like the mysis cost about 6.99 a package but I only use three cubes. the dulse cost 2.99 a package but I only used two leaves and have enough to make another 10 to 20 batches. its far cheaper to make your own then to buy the pre frozen. just a little more work.

 

[luke01]

what exactly to you feed and what about disease????

 

[reefkprz]

I'm currently feeding,
2 tomatoe clowns
1 LMB
1 six line wrasse
1 sand perch
2 cleaner shrimp
fire shrimp
peppermint shrimp
scopas tang (that I got stuck with because my friend changed his mind about wanting it)
2 black clowns
palythoas
frogspawn
2 types of trumpet coral
fungia
more palythoas
3 brittle starfish
2 perc clowns
blastomusa
hammer coral
I think there is more too but cant think of it offhand
of course all of this isnt in the same tank the clowns are all seperate.
I dont worry about disease. inverts dont carry ich and the fish meat is dead so most parasites or pathogens die with it. freezing is pretty hard on dieases.

 

[cfung]

wow sounds good.

 

[whyamisofl]

Not to bring up a dead thread, but how do you make the food sink???
I made food in the past, only to have it float on the top and my fish never ate it. In my previous life I didn't QT (I know, I KNOW!) so my maroon clown didn't eat out of my hand. He would chill at the bottom of the tank and I would have to put the food in front of him with chopsticks and hope that he ate before it floated to the top again.
Any suggestions?

 

[perfectdark]

Using pretty much everything ReefKPR used, with the exception of 2 items I just made a batch myself. I used some selcon and mixed it in with mine too. I dont know why yours floated but I did nothing more than blend it up and freeze it and mine sinks all the time.

 

[lexluethar]

Too much water and air? I would assume the only reason your mixture floats is because you've placed more water into your mix, or you have a lot of air bubbles in there. That would be the only two cases that would constitute the chunks floating.
Mine floats as well, but this past batch was my first time making it, so i've fined tuned my method so next time it shouldn't sink. Although I have seen no ill effects from my fish eating floating chunks of food. I have precut cubes and I just drop one in there (yes the cubes are small enough that they eat all the food in <2 minutes), then it floats and the fish nibble off the bottom until it is gone, or until is starts to sink.

 

[whyamisofl]

I don't recall if I used freshwater or not.....that possibly could have been the floating issue

 

[sbaumann14]

also, i will use a piece of egg crate on a sheet pan, press the food into the squares... flash freeze it for an hour or so then put it into baggies and freeze for later use

 

[reefkprz]

Originally Posted by sbaumann14
http:///forum/post/2616578
also, i will use a piece of egg crate on a sheet pan, press the food into the squares... flash freeze it for an hour or so then put it into baggies and freeze for later use
I actually did that same thing (egg crate) last time I made food it works awesome. newtoit gave me the idea.

 

[shinobi9119]

If your food is put into eggcrate sized chunks, how many cubes does it take to feed the fish? What method do you use to feed your corals the food?

 

[reefkprz]

Originally Posted by Shinobi9119
http:///forum/post/2616795
If your food is put into eggcrate sized chunks, how many cubes does it take to feed the fish? ?
totally depends on how many fish wwhat type, etcetera. there is no way to answer that question accuratly without more information on stock tank size and yadda yadda.
Originally Posted by Shinobi9119
http:///forum/post/2616795
What method do you use to feed your corals the food?
I melt all my food in tank water then dump them in the tank after they are thawed. I reccomend shrimp netting the food out and discarding the water. I dont but I know my system and maintinence rituals can handle the excess nutrients. most younger tanks and adequetly maintained tanks cant handle all the meat water, without serious algae problems after a while.