Homemade Foods for Marine Fish
Lewis Johnson
(assembeled) foods that they have used? I have used the recipie that Spotte
had in FIC, but wondered how this may have evolved in the last 15 years
that I have been out of the hobby?
JEFF PFOHL
From: nar...@percival.cs.albany.edu (Thomas Narten)
Subject: Homemade fish food recipes
Date: 23 Feb 1994 13:48:19 GMT
In article <2ke1et$4...@crcnis1.unl.edu> late...@unlinfo.unl.edu (Latenser) writes:
> >BTW, I'm feeding them
> >freeze-dried tubifex worms, flake food, frozen brine shrimp, and more
> >recently, home-made paste food.
>
> Recipe? Hint, Hint, Nudge, Nudge.
Here is what I use. I've only been using it 3 weeks, but my fish all
like it just fine. I got the recipe from Steve Shine
(sh...@hoqub.att.com). It is based on one described by C.E. Bower in
"The Basic Marine Aquarium", 1983. Here is Steve's description:
Bower's recipe calls for shrimp, fish filet, lots of veggies (parsley,
carrots, spinach, green beans), brewers yeast, baby vitamins, and
gelatin. I recall it being about 50% vegetable matter. In my
opinion, Bower's recipe needs another packet of gelatin; her recipe
just falls apart in my tanks. I've received a couple of private
emails from people who've tried her recipe, some of whom say their
fish aren't really enthusiastic about it. That was my case as well
(although my veggie-loving SW and FW fish did enjoy it). I made
another batch with some large deviations in proportions (less vegs,
more animal matter, same vitamins), and it's a universal success with
both my FW and SW fish. Even my pickier killies like it. If your
fish have never seen paste food, they may need a couple of feedings
before they recognize it as Good Stuff, so don't worry if they act
uninterested on the first pass. Like I said, all my fish love this
stuff.
Bower, C. E., The Basic Marine Aquarium, 1983.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Measurements are from just eyeballing it. This recipe is based upon a
Carol Bower's "Omnivore Diet", found in her book "The Basic Marine
Aquarium".
==========================================
Shine's version of Bower's "Omnivore Diet"
==========================================
5 oz whole shrimp (I did remove the tail fins)
5 oz haddock filet (I use canned tuna in water)
4 oz crab meat
1 Tblspn parsley
1 Tblspn carrot shavings
1 Tblspn spinach
1 Tblspn green peas
1 Tblspn oatmeal cereal
2 teaspns brewers yeast (ever read the composition of this stuff? Wow.)
.5 teaspn Poly-Vi-Sol baby vitamins
2 or 3 dashes paprika
3 drops anise extract
3 packets gelatin (Use Knox, cheap brands don't work as well) [note:
I already upped the quantity of gelatin, so ignore the comments
about using more]
Dump it all (except gelatin) into a bar blender with a couple oz water
and puree it. Dissolve the gelatin in 10 oz boiling water, and slowly
add this into the blender while churning. Let it sit for a minute to
let the air bubbles escape, then pour into zip lock baggies. (If you
want floating food, blend it until you get lots of air bubbles.) I
put enough into the baggies to make a layer about 1 cm think, which is
easy to cut up into long strips with a knife (see last step). Lay the
baggies flat in the fridge to chill for a day to let the gelatin set
up. I make a stack of zip lock baggies separated by small pieces of
plywood to keep the baggies flat. DO NOT put the food directly into
the freezer or the gelatin won't do its job. After a day in the
fridge, move the stack of baggies/plywood into the freezer. After it
freezes, cut it into chunks or slices for feeding and put it back into
the zip locks. The fish sure do like it.
I made a batch of this once using canned tuna (in water, of course), and
I didn't like the consistency. [Note: I used canned tuna and 3 packets
of gelatin and mine came out fine.]
A neat method of getting atin and mine came out fine.]
A neat method of getting all the air bubbles out of the zip lock baggies
when the food is hot is to submerge most of the baggie in a sink full
of water. This forces the air up so you can easily "burp" the bag
to remove the bubbles.
--
Thomas Narten
nar...@cs.albany.edu
From: al...@vkgs.com (Alisa Dean)
Newsgroups: rec.aquaria,alt.aquaria
Subject: Re: What the heck is "infusoria" and where do I get it?
Date: 29 Jun 1995 00:11:04 GMT
In article <kfc-270695...@pm021.vcr.wis.net>, k...@wimsey.com (Ken Cunningham) says:
>
>I've heard that the best food for newly hatched fry is infusoria.
>
>Where do I get/grow/culture this stuff?
"Infusoria" is a generic term for the microscopic and near-microscopic
life found in water. Examples are protozoa, rotifers, etc.
Many newborn fry from egg layers are so small that their mouths
can only fit around microscopic beasties.
How to get some? They are already in your tank. The problem is
that there is probably so few that they could not support a batch
of fry. Therefore, you must cultivate them.
Take a large jar (gallon sized, if possible). Fill with water from
your tank. Add a handful of straw or grass. Put in the sun for a
few days. If you look closely, you'll see the water get cloudy -
that's infusoria growing. If you look _really_ closely, you'll
see little specks moving around.
Use a turkey baster or eyedropper to feed water from your jar near
the batch of fry.
I read somewhere that the water from a vase of flowers is full of
infusoria - however, it usually smells so bad I would hesitate to use
it.
A sponge filter in your tank will also cultivate infusoria. Fry will
pick at it.
You can order specific species of microscopic animals from
biology lab supply houses. I'm sure they'll provide instructions for
cultivation.
Good luck
Alisa
--
JEFF PFOHL
E-MAIL: PF...@NUCMAR.PHYSICS.FSU.EDU
PHONE : (904) 644-1598 work
(904) 224-0707 home
(904) 644-9848 fax
"I will shoulder more than my share of the task, whatever it may be.
100% and then some!"
Philip Deitiker
A friend of mine was using my discus beefheart diet in his marine tank
and his fish loved it. To my surprise the butterfly fish that really
hadn't eaten since he got them tore into the stuff. I don't think I've
ever seen a copperband or a longnose ever eat so much at one time. Don't
ask me why though.
I think that a major problem with many marine diets is they lack the
nutrition required for many marine fish, brine shrimp is particularly bad
in this regard.
Philip
Steve Ghera
le...@pliny.ufl.edu writes:
>Speaking to the "fish keepers", does anyone have recipies for homemade
>(assembeled) foods that they have used?
These are not assembled, but I have been using these items to keep my
yellow tang alive for about 9 months. I have a reef tank that is devoid
of algae. I heard that with out the algae, the tang will starve to death
in short order. And romaine lettuce won't keep him alive more than 6
months.
So, I have been using green peas, boiled and chopped carrots, spinach,
yellow corn, green beans, baked beans and bread. The yellow tang loves
bread, carrots and especially baked beans.
A recent article in FAMA cited some oils (corn, olive, sunflower et. al.)
as containing some lipo-proteins beneficial to corals and fish. Well, I
noticed that the bread is made with many of these oils.
Steve Ghera
Dave Sheehy
> I think that a major problem with many marine diets is they lack the
> nutrition required for many marine fish, brine shrimp is particularly bad
> in this regard.
While I agree with your statement regarding marine fish nutrition I must
disagree with your statement regarding brine shrimp.
Brine shrimp contain pigments needed for general health that are not found
in many foods available for marine fish and other than being somewhat low
in lipid content they are a fine food. I would not base a fish's entire diet
on brine shrimp but they do serve a valuable role as a component of a complete
and varied diet.
Dave Sheehy
Mike Noreen
Thusly d...@hprnd.rose.hp.com spake unto All:
>> I think that a major problem with many marine diets is they lack the
>> nutrition required for many marine fish, brine shrimp is particularly bad
>> in this regard.
d> While I agree with your statement regarding marine fish nutrition I must
d> disagree with your statement regarding brine shrimp.
d> Brine shrimp contain pigments needed for general health that are not found
d> in many foods available for marine fish and other than being somewhat low
d> in lipid content they are a fine food. I would not base a fish's entire
You are both right. The nutritional value of Brine Shrimp nauplii is totally
dependent on the nutritional state of their parents. This means that
eggs collected in sites where the nutritional situation is poor, is of
very low nutritional value, while the opposite may be true in another site.
Also, the nutritional value (and size!) of the nauplii vary with the
particular strain of brineshrimp. Since it was over a year since I took
my course in aquaculture, and my memory being what it is, I wont finger
brineshrimp from any specific locations, but one should be aware that
'brine shrimp' can differ enormously from dealer to dealer.
This is a problem for commercial farmers, since it is often impossible
to know from which region a particular batch of brineshrimp were collected,
so many farmers let the nauplii feed high quality food before feeding them
to the fry. This enables the farmer to control the nutritional value of the
shrimp.
d> Dave Sheehy
MVH: Mike Noreen
Internet: rad...@p14.anet.canit.se
Fido: 2:201/411.14
___ Terminate 1.50/Pro