Made my own general purpose fish food

Cirith Ungol

Ministry of Fluffy Bunnies
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I went ahead with it today as I realized last night I nearly had everything at home to make the stuff anyway.

I used my meat grinder to grind up the following:

1 hand full of shrimp with shells and everything
1 hand full of broccoli
1 hand full of cauliflower, carrots and peas
about 15 half grown dubia roaches
6 thumbnail sized blocks of artemia brine shrimp
4 slices of whole wheat, dry crisp bread
about 4 table spoons of pure Spirulina powder

It smelled horrible and turned out green. Looked like ground spinach. I wanted to use some agar agar to make it into a paste, but.. it was already a paste. So I just packaged it and froze it.

Before that I tried feeding my fish, with mixed results. Some loved if, others were a bit fuzzy about it. However, all ate it. I think they just need to get used to it a little more. Mostly when I introduce something new they've been a bit critical of it at the beginning.

Next time I might add a little garlic.

Any views on the recipe or hints, tips or questions?

I have mostly south American cichlids with a few others mixed in.
 

NikiP

Arachnobaron
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That's an awesome idea!! Had never thought about blending food. I have a mudskipper that loves to eat, would love to add some variety, but I have a hard time cutting up food small enoug. Will have to try! Love the addition of roaches!
 

bugmankeith

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Instead of roaches I would have suggested fruit flies. Isnt Romaine Lettuce or crushed Algae Wafers good too?
 

Cirith Ungol

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Lettuce is one of the things that is said not to do any good in a fish diet at all.
The Spirulina powder is algae powder, it's in fact the ingredient you buy algae wafers for in the first place, yet wafers only contain 10% of the stuff, contain food colouring, contain 10% ash (what fish or other animals need to eat that for is beyond me).

The Spirulina powder I calculated costs exactly as much as the wafers, yet contains 10 times more of the algae.

Something that I did not add but will add next time is some sort of fish oil. A really fatty one, though of course only a small amount. I think however that the shrimp I put in there are pretty oily already. I can feel the oil on my fingers anyway, every time I peel any.

I don't know about fruit flies. It's all one much anyway and the roaches are totally ground up and in tiny bits so it's no real difference.
 

mitchrobot

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aw man, back in my cichlid keeping days i was a total diet nazi when it came to their health....im talking like 3 page long drawn out blah-blahs online.

just getting back into it with a nice order of umbriferum :cool:.

what kind of cichlids are you feeding?

spirulina, kelp, peas, spinach and romaine lettuce are good. romaine isnt the *best* green, but it is one that many SA/CA cichlids eat and enjoy.

i would replace the brine shrimp with either mysis or krill. or make a trap and catch/freeze crawdads. i was getting like 50 per pull on my two traps back in the day, but the creeks here are lousy with them, which made for FAT and colorful cichlids. brine shrimp are mostly water and shell, which the fiber is good, i feel they lack in everything else.

roaches, crickets, mealworms, BSF larvea silk worms...all are wonderful sources of nutrition if properly gutloaded. and many cichlids, besides eating algea blobs and detritus also eat a lot of invertebrates. and again, they have a lot of fiber. fiber IMO is the best way to stay safe from common bloat in these guys (many CAs are touchy)

EARTHWORMS. cant beat earth worms. in terms of conditioning fish for breeding, i swear by these things. i had atleast 13 pairs breeding at a time and i thank these for huge and healthy spawns and breeders. black worms are also great.

whole fish....smelt are great. back when i fed my fish a lot of chopped frozen foods. smelt are great, and have all the eyes bones and guts. chopped fellets are good fillers, but lack a lot of the good stuff beyond just meat.
guppies are great too. now this also is dependent on the species. some fish (like oscars, amphilophus etc) dont need much of this, if at all, and i swear feeding too rich of fatty meat stuffs leads to damage livers in these guys. although im no scientist. my fish eaters (parachromis and other guapotes) would get fry from all my breeders, or guppies and mollies i was getting from local breeders for free. not as a staple, just to round out the diet. these too were 'gutloaded'

i would shy away from broccoli and cauliflower...only becuase i know they make humans and most everything else gassy. but otherwise, i dunno, theyre probably fine.

now a quick note on home made prepared foods: although i personally feel that adding many live gutloaded invertebrates, as well as high quality fresh foods and vegitables into the diet of cichlids, i feel doing to home work to figure out what your fish needs is very important and target feeding can go a long way. also i feed a high quality pellet food is important to keep in the diet, and i would only recommend ONE. many are mainly corn or wheat based garbage, some have fish meal. Omega1 however is one of the few that uses many whole fish as the main ingrediant, as well as kelp, spirulina, krill, mysis, alfalfa, etc etc. its great stuff. its also not messy like new life spectrum and holds form well. pelleted foods also have many vitamins and minerals added, not to say they are needed if fed a really good diet, but it doesnt hurt.

fruit flies IMO would be ignored by many of the bigger cichlids.

~m
 

Crysta

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(Cirth)With all that broccoli i'd think the fish would be swimming faster with all that gas they are sprouting....can fish fart?
 

Cirith Ungol

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Mitch, I have Aequidens metae, Astronotus ocellatus, Pelvicachromis pulcher. Then I have a bunch of other fish including loaches.

The ingredients above are all part of what I've seen recommended in other recipes in about these amounts, but I can not say I have any species specific information on what to give them. My aim was to try and go high on fibre as that seems to be generally healthy for them.

I will change the recipe for the next batch. Good tip on the worms, I usually have them at home too, but not this time, or I would have added a bunch of those too.

Crysta: Broccoli contains a lot of goodness, but the best of it is the dietary fibre.
 
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