any one make own fish/coral food

[kesslerkid01]

Hello all
I have been doing some research on making our own food was wondering if any here has tried it? And what are your results?

 

[Bri Guy]

We made some at a meet once, at Freds house, quite an experience....

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[Bri Guy]

p.s. I still remember the smell...

 

[MSU Fan]

We have in the past, but you really have to change your feeding habits or cyano is a probability. We haven't really got that down, so we backed off making another batch for now. It's not hard if you have a grinder of some sort, otherwise a food processor or blender can do the job.

Oh, I missed your question. It works well, everyone gets fat and happy, and generally the corals will respond better, especially if you are spot feeding them. They love Rod's, that's for sure! But we would put oysters, salmon, vitamins, and a whole bunch of other stuff too (garlic, selcon, etc) in there and the fish went crazy for it. But the cyano was such a PITA that we haven't made any in a while.

 

[ReeferGoalie]

p.s. I still remember the smell...

LOL, I still have the smell!

Definitely something you need to be careful with when actually feeding, since a random mix might have things in it the tank won't consume and you're just polluting.

 

[Jhildebrand]

I love making it and waaaay cheaper. They get flakes once a day and a cube of homebrew at night. I put cyclops and reef chili in the mix and it feeds the corals too.

 

[daddavis1]

Quite a while back there was a thread on italies best reefs where they were achieving 14" of growth in a year. Their acro's weren't sticks they were branches. The displays were most impressive. Most were using Human growth hormone in the food recipie but adding broad spectrum amino acids and Omega 5 fatty acids seems to be really beneficial as well. Other ingredients Osters, Shrimp, scallops, Spirilinia or Nori and sugar.

 

[MrSquid]

Years ago at the pet store we used to feed a testosterone-based flake food. The difference in color on the freshwater was pretty insane - even in the short time they were at the store were pretty insane. Kind of interesting adding HGH.

 

[jlinzmaier]

OK. Simply trying to get interceptor for a tank is quite an ordeal. How the H*** does someone get HGH for their tank?????? I've certainly got some physicians that I'm friends with (I'm a nurse), but even they would think I'm nuts for asking for a script for HGH for my fish tank. Maybe Al can hook us up with some scripts. Then of course the pharmacy would certainly give you trouble too.

Out of sheer curiosity I'd love to give this a try!!! Would it make my little gobies bigger and stronger - LOL!!

Jeremy

 

[Jhildebrand]

eh, if all those roided out athletes and body builders can get it on the internet.....

road trip to a tiujana pharmacy, anyone?

 

[jlinzmaier]

Mike.

What kind of fish food were you feeding that has testosterone in it??? I can't imagine that our FDA hasn't jumped all over that and banned it. Some meat head is going to find this stuff, eat a few cans and die from it. The only legitimate possibility I could see this occurring is if there is such a small amount of testosterone there would be no way it could have any effect on human metabolism (even if you ate like 10 cans of it - you know someone is going to see testosterone on the label and down some!!).


I can see it already. On an upcoming episode of "Worlds Dumbest" we're going to see some guy eating fish food before a body building contest thinking the testosterone will beef him up. Better yet, we'll see a baseball player come out at a press conference after testing + for elevated levels of testosterone in his system and he'll blame it on the fish food he likes to eat for a snack.

Jeremy

 

[jlinzmaier]

Check this out!!

Google Translate

The dosing of GH, as Dan alluded to, is related to the "Blue Method". An interesting concept. I'll do some more digging and see what I can come up with.

Jeremy

 

[NewMelee]

I had stumbled across a conversation here about this method, but it was very vague.....

Pics of the persons tank were awesome

 

[jlinzmaier]

Hold the boat a bit. Read this.
Need quick SPS growth [Archive] - Marine Aquariums of South Africa

After getting through all the initial excitement that a growth hormone might actually stimulate coral growth, I read things over more thoroughly. It seems that the GH actually has no effect on corals as they have no growth hormone receptors nor are they able to utilize the HGH which is being used in the blue method (or other means of GH addition) becuase HGH is specific only to sapien species. The HGH gets broken down to a useable amino acid. It sounds like in these Italian systems that this was being experimented with, there was also an increase in alk, ca, and mag, in addition to very strong lighting, strong flow, heavy feeding, AA dosing, and nutrient levels (no3 and po4) were kept in the undetectable range. A friend once shot me an article showing that calcification rates in corals can significantly increase as alk levels are increased (and sufficient nutrients are provided for tissue growth). The article outlined continuing exponential growth of corals at alk levels near 24dkh. Please nobody raise their alk that high!! This was done under a very strict labratory setting and advanced instrumentation was used to measure the coral growth and it's relation to alk levels. This is, by no means, a suggestion to maintain levels that high. Without careful attention, you'll likely wipe out your entire tank if you shoot for alk levels that high.

After all that mumble jumble, my underlying point is that with sufficient food for tissue growth (primarily proper amino acids and fatty acids) and sufficient skeletal building material (alk, ca, mag, sr, etc...) coral growth can be spectacular and the HGH added to systems likely only contributes as an appropriate AA for the corals to feed on.

Jeremy

 

[daddavis1]

Good points Jeremy, the 24dKh is a bit alarming especially in light of high calcium levels I would expect any heaters or pumps in a system like that would be particularly short.

There are just a handful of Amino acids really needed to but I had very interesting results with some 1000mg broad spectrum from the health store. Results like exponential increase in growth tips, thickening in the branches, better coloration.
For kicks I added about 5000mg of fish oil with omega 5 fatey acids also this just seemed to stimulate longer feeding.

 

[daddavis1]

I do believe in having sugar in the food. It spurs bacterial growth which will effectly convert the food slurry into live food in your system. Everything except the fish eat bacteria

Dan

 

[jlinzmaier]

Adding sugar in the mix would complicate things IMO. You can stimulate the growth of any type of bacteria (good or bad) by adding a carbon source. There is still significant research that needs to be done on the cumulative effects of carbon source dosing in a closed system reef tank. There are intricate balances that corals have with symbiotic bacteria and carbon dosing has led to many disastrous tank crashes and coral plagues as well as produced some very nice SPS growth and coloration in other tanks. Until further research is done I'm done dosing a carbon source for the purpose of bacterial proliferation. Too many unknowns at this point and there are many other means of nutrient management that are far more understood and controlled.

You make a very good point in your indication that many reef animals feed on bacteria. This is absolutely true and I do plan to use a gentle and more controlled means of bacterial growth and mulm (bacterioplankton) release without having the risk of creating a massive overgrowth of potentially harmful bacertia. Just another means of food for the inverts which is yet again something different from the routine cyclops and oyster eggs. I think diversity in the types of foods that are fed is very important.

I certainly can't knock the "Blue Method" process and the mixture of ingredients that are fed, I mean look at the results. I wouldn't, however, recommend adding sugar to just any sort of food mix.

Yeah, there are a thousand and one reasons not to try to increase coral growth by maintaining alk levels above 13 or 14 dkh but I do believe there can be a significant difference in growth rates at 7-8 dkh vs 13-14 dkh. If you just evaluate the basic theory behind it, it's pretty straight forward. Don't limit the coral growth by not providing enough of the building blocks to create their skeletal structures. In the future I'm going to do some controlled experimentation on dosing high levels of top notch AA preparations in addition to maintianing a very high alk, ca, mag, and sr level to see how far I can push the limits. It'll be a fun little project anyway.

Jeremy

 

[ca2or]

Here is how I make mine
https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/f30/my-diy-complete-reef-food-32287.html

 

[Bri Guy]

Jeremy, are you still doing Zeo?

very informative post as always!

 

[jlinzmaier]

Jeremy, are you still doing Zeo?

very informative post as always!

Nope. Done with nearly every aspect of zeo.

This part of my previous post is an aspect of zeo that I'll be continuin,g but at a very small portion in comparison to the zeo recommendations.

I do plan to use a gentle and more controlled means of bacterial growth and mulm (bacterioplankton) release without having the risk of creating a massive overgrowth of potentially harmful bacertia

I'll still be using the zeolites in a reactor with routine agitation twice daily. The one aspect of zeo (and likely the only aspect) that actually has been documented and proven is that bacteria have an affinity for growing on zeolites. By allowing high concentrations to grow on the zeolites then agitating the zeolites vigorously, there will be a release of mulm (bacterioplankon) which is very beneficial for many reef inhabitants. In my new system with a total water volume near 700 gallons (when it's all said and done) would call for 7 liters of zeolites to be used. I'll only be using 1 liter at a very low flow rate.

As for the rest of the zeo system, I've realized it's too uncontrolled and the "theories" about the effects of the products (being stated as truths) are too unsubstantiated for my liking. There are too many unknown factors and false claims being made about their products and how they work. Having used nearly every one of the products (with the dosing guidance of the zeo experts) I saw very little reactions similar to what KZ states the products will do. My initial excitement and initial vows to never use anything other than zeo was skewed a bit. What I saw as major color improvement was nothing more than color manipulation by bacterial proliferation causing a small degree of bleaching. Unfortunately, there is a very fine line between bleaching a bit to create brighter colors and a level of bacterial proliferation which will easily cause mass death of your corals. Bill's tank was a seriously misfortunate episode of this possibility.

My apologies Kris for getting this off track a bit.

Jeremy