How I DIY fish food.

[skinz78]

...WARNING...

Making this stuff is not for the faint of heart or for people who have a bad gag reflex....... but it is great stuff.

This "practice run" by us noobs to DIY food was pretty much a last min thing. Our local seafood market was closed today "Sunday" and Safeway didn't really have all that we were looking for. We ended up going to the local sporting goods store for some bait. We'll see how the fish like this batch and change it accordingly next batch.

We started off with the cleaner stuff, we used some red and green seaweed from Ocean Nutrition Seaweed Selects. You can get the same stuff but a lot cheaper from your Asian food store. We just had this stuff on hand already. My buddy Bill shredded it up and then we soaked it in RODI water.

Then I took the frozen bait and thawed it in some warm water in the sink.

 

[skinz78]

I highly recommend doing this outside from this step forward. It gets gross and messy. These pics are the ingredients all lined up prior to use. From left to right, distilled water, Squid, Herring, Anchovies.

Shrimp with eggs, some leftover Silver Sides, Brine, and Mysis shrimp I had left over and wanted to use up.

Rock fish.

Krill and soaked sea weed.

Now the fun part begins.........blending It is a toss up on what is the worst smell, oysters or the squid.

Here we have the sea weed, we blended it some to break it down further. If you have bigger fish then you want to keep the chunks bigger as well, for the most part we have small fish.

The beginnings of puke in a bucket LOL. We have the krill and the sea weed in there.

Oysters pre blend, then after blend. Nasty nasty stuff.

We blended some of the Rock Fish and some Spirulina pellets together and put them in a bowl off to the side to soak the pellets up.

This is either anchovies or herring, pretty much the same.

The shrimp we got had eggs so that was a bonus.

Puke in a bucket pic 2

We shelled the shrimp and threw the shells away, no need for them.

The end to a bad day for these guys.

This little Anchovy was saying his last words.

 

[skinz78]

So now we add some good stuff for the fishie's.

We put some minced garlic in, approx 3 tsp.

Dash of Seachem Garlic Guard about 1/2 bottle of Selcon, and about 1/3 bottle of Vita Chem.

Some baby brine shrimp that Bill had.

Final bucket o puke pic.

Then we took 1 gallon Ziploc freezer bags and put approx 3 cups of food in each.

I didn't get any more pic's. I'll have to get some more the next go around, I want to try using eggcrate to make little food squares.

Basically we took the Ziploc bags put the food in and removed as much excess air as possible. Then we took them and laid them flat in my freezer and made them as thin as possible to easily break the food off to feed out.

My hands still stink.:tongue:

 

[secretreefer]

Nice!!!!!

 

[Captain Nemo]

WOW!!! Awesome write up skinz!!!I had never even thought of making my own fish food, great idea!! Let us know how it goes with the fish and how much they like it!:wink:

 

[skinz78]

LOL I can tell you they love it, I think the corals love it too and I cut down on my coral feedings when feeding my DIY food.

If anyone else makes DIY food please feel free to add how you do it to this thread as well.

 

[Neil]

Do you find that there a lot of small particles in the food that the fish don't eat? I have that problem when I make blended food. I have to be conservative on how much I feed because I get cyano outbreaks easily when using home made blended food.

 

[Jcr's Reef]

Ewww Gross :tongue:....using the egg crates works real good. Take a cookie pan without the wife knowing and freeze it overnight. The next day put them in ziplock baggies..I use the same minced garlic for my food as well, or just soak frozen food in it (put in cup w/saltwater from the tank and put on top of MH to thaw out).
You can also add frozen cyclopeeze, phytoplankton, reefchilli (coral foods and such) etc... to the mix for newbies that are wanting to try it...
You can also go to GNC and buy powderedforms of algae, and all different kinds of other stuff to add to it as well.
Keep adding to this Skinz and let us know how you tweak your food, and what mix your tank responds to the best...Great write up!

 

[btkrausen]

Nice write up. Our local club has done DIY fish food in the past, and we go through about the same process. We have everyone bring in one thing, and by the time we are down, everyone goes home with some nice food.

 

[jledon4]

So now we add some good stuff for the fishie's.

We put some minced garlic in, approx 3 tsp.

Dash of Seachem Garlic Guard about 1/2 bottle of Selcon, and about 1/3 bottle of Vita Chem.

Some baby brine shrimp that Bill had.

Final bucket o puke pic.

Then we took 1 gallon Ziploc freezer bags and put approx 3 cups of food in each.

I didn't get any more pic's. I'll have to get some more the next go around, I want to try using eggcrate to make little food squares.

Basically we took the Ziploc bags put the food in and removed as much excess air as possible. Then we took them and laid them flat in my freezer and made them as thin as possible to easily break the food off to feed out.

My hands still stink.:tongue:

great food medley for your tank!! the only thing that i really didn't like about your method was that you're using garlic that has been minced already! if your going through all this job of mixing everything, instead of using that garlic that is kept in oil why not just blend some whole cloves in with the mix??

 

[skinz78]

Do you find that there a lot of small particles in the food that the fish don't eat? I have that problem when I make blended food. I have to be conservative on how much I feed because I get cyano outbreaks easily when using home made blended food.

I haven't ever noticed it, seems that the finer particles is what I am hoping my coral gets out of the deal.

 

[skinz78]

great food medley for your tank!! the only thing that i really didn't like about your method was that you're using garlic that has been minced already! if your going through all this job of mixing everything, instead of using that garlic that is kept in oil why not just blend some whole cloves in with the mix??

I haven't ever thought about it, I actually think the oil may help with keeping the possibility of Ich at bay?

 

[jledon4]

im sure that most of those proteins that you included in the mix have plenty of oils...

 

[CausticGuy]

Looks tasty, Ive always wanted to try out making my own food.

 

[kingfisherfleshy]

I will be doing this once I get my 125g fully stocked. Do you find that the particles are too fine, or enough of a mix that you can feed larger and smaller fish? Do your corals snag any of it? As another mentioned, my only concern would be h2o quality when feeding something like this.

 

[skinz78]

I think both large and small fish are fine with this, if you are concerned with the larger fish not getting much just plop the cube in the tank while still frozen so they can nibble on it. As for the corals, yes I do see them snagging this stuff up.

 

[kingfisherfleshy]

Thanks...how about the minced garlic? Any issues with that floating around? It would seem to me that the fish wouldnt eat it...I will be doing this in the next couple weeks and think I will just go to the store and get some garlic extract...like from the whole foods store or whatever.

All the goodness and none of the mess I hope. Thanks for the good thread. Ill post back with my details/mix.

 

[skinz78]

I haven't ever had any issues with the Garlic floating around. I have seen some fish eat it and then spit it up but usually it all gets consumed.

 

[scott711]

Nice write up! I have made my own food for quite some time and developed quite a list of ingredients for everything in the tank:

Shrimp
clams
scallops
oysters
Squid
mussels
mackeral
Aloe Vera
Live phytoplanton
bloodworms freeze dried/frozen
brine shrimp
baby brine
rotifers frozen/freeze dried
PE mysis shrimp
Mysis
Prawn Roe
cyclopeeze
oyster eggs
spectrum small pellets
decapsulated brine shrimp
freeze dried copepods
Golden Pearls 5-800 microns 6 different types
red gracilaria
brocolli
Zoe
Zoecon
Garlic Extract
Chromamax
Nori

 

[turbo21]

i used to make my own food in the past. we also used romaine lettuce, carrots, spinach in addition to anything meaty and saltwater friendly to add.

make sure to use ro water when making your food