Homemade Fish Food Ideas (DIY)

[Projects with Sam]

Blended sea food is interesting. Wasn't sure if there's actually much for the fish to eat if it's liquified. But I have larger fish that could fit a whole fish in their belly, so blended microscopic food wouldn't be beneficial for them.

I use a cheese grater attachment on my Kitchen Aid mixer. I keep all sea food frozen and run it through the cheese grater. This keeps the food from liquifying and it comes out as flakes. There's two sizes if of graters. I run shrimp, scallops, and tuna (raw and frozen) through the cheese grater into disposable aluminum trays. I keep ice under the tray that receives said frozen food. Then manually tear up nori, I add 1-2 bottles of selcon, some aminos, a couple cap fulls of powdered food from BRS to add color to the food and the fish. And then I add some type of oyster feast, fish eggs, something small for smaller fish as well as Benepet coral food. I usually do a freeze dried food of some type. My fish seem to like freeze dried mysis. (a whole container).

I Then mix all ingreadents gently into the frozen food so as not to crush the freeze drived food. Then I use gallon freezer bags and gently place on a scale. A 1 gallon freezer bag easily holds 16 oz (1lb) of food and I flatten it into a flat pack and place in freezer immediately before it thaws too much.

I've done 6-8 lbs, up to 16 lbs of this at once in a 3-4 hour period.

Rod's food is $18 for 6 oz (plus shipping). I do mine for around $25 for 16 oz. I save easily $400-600 a year by spending 3-4 making my own food.

great idea! I was thinking about something similar but never got past grating it; didn't think about cooling the catchment pan.
I use the gelatin to keep it together. the cube-trays I have are small enough some of my fish can eat a whole cube. Some of the cubes go through the MP40 for the smaller fish.

 

[Turbo's Aquatics Verified Sponsor]

@Projects with Sam OT but why is the text in your signature all blurry, that's kinda annoying...

 

[Projects with Sam]

@Projects with Sam OT but why is the text in your signature all blurry, that's kinda annoying...

:D click on it. - lol its outdated.

 

[Trizz]

Step 2 Chop fresh seafood available to a paste form, pick something up J and it does not have to be the same all the time.

i just did the same thing fish and nems love it

 

[reef tank 2.0]

for those of you that have a couple small fish (1"-3")......are you making homemade food? portions would have to be super small. Working with such small portions, I assume the food would go bad before you'd actually use it. Maybe going the homemade food route would be best when you have more livestock/nems, in the tank

 

[TeamAquaSD Verified Sponsor]

Love making my own food. I always found it way better to make sure everything is frozen and if using a meat grinder any metal attachments you can slip into the freezer will keep things a bit "chunkier" rather than a puree. Helps with keeping the food in the fish and out of your filter socks :)

 

[biecacka]

Just made some today. Use a food processor to chunk up the seafood into various sizes for various fish. Selcon, pellets, reefroids, nori, then whatever seafood I had.

Fish approved of the first feeding of it! HahahA

Corey

 

[BelindaMay]

Cool thread! I’ve been wanting to try making my own fish food too. The ice-cube method sounds smart. Does freezing affect the nutritional quality much, especially for sensitive species?

 

[Turbo's Aquatics Verified Sponsor]

Cool thread! I’ve been wanting to try making my own fish food too. The ice-cube method sounds smart. Does freezing affect the nutritional quality much, especially for sensitive species?

Not that I'm aware of

 

[Treefer32]

I've done my own food a few times over the years and one thing I took from BRS that I feel was a game changer in the food texture was a cheese grater. I bought the stainless steel cheese grater attachment for my kitchen aid mixer. I run frozen scallops, frozen mahi ahi tuna, and frozen shrimp to it. It does need to thaw a little, but not much. Just to a point where the outside of the food is "swetting" but nothing is getting soft. Run it through the cheese grater and you get rice sized pieces of meat. Fluff it up, and add any nori, or other liquid supplements to it and flatten it into gallon baggies as thick or thin as you want for feeding and then throw in the deep freezer. I use the disposable alumina trays and I double stack the trays and put a layer of ice cubes in the bottom tray and then the tray the food goes into on top. That keeps the food nicely frozen while I'm grating the food. Takes around an hour to do about 6 lbs of sea food including cleanup. I've done 12 lbs before and that requires multiple trays and putting them in the freezer as I'm working on other trays of food. Gallon baggies work great as I got about 1lb of food per gallon baggy.

My fish and corals loved the food. It was large enough particles for both small and large fish that they would just go nuts for it. Now, I've got an frozen food auto feeder and Nori does not go through it very well (or at all). So If I make my own food again, I have to keep the nori out.