share your recipe?

[Anonymous]

i recently tried a LFS's homemade reef food and found it superior to the miscellaneos frozen i buy. so i figure why not make a mess of the kitchen.

i'd buy from the LFS but its not for sale, besides there is a few items i can make out in there i don't want to use;cooked clams,huge silversides, and what appears to be fat of some sort.

so i'd find it useful for myself as well as others if you all could post your best.

a million thanks,
pod

 

[Mac1]

Eric Borneman has a pretty good recipie floating around the 'net, that I based mine off of. Basically I just get whatever fish meat the local market has on sale. I always use fresh whenever possible, never canned, and occasionally frozen. As for the meaty parts, I like to buy whenever I can:

Crab
Scallop
Live Clams
Shrimp
Squid
White fish (usually Tilapia at my local market)
Tuna (small steak - too oily)
Smelt (also very oily)

For my corals, I get a boatload of stuff from BrineShrimpDirect.com. Damn near everything "micro" they sell, as well as a healthy bottle of Selco and the Tahitian Blend Cryopaste. Been serving up that mixture for a little over a year now, and the tank has never looked better.

- Mac

 

[reefland]

I use raw cocktail shrimp as the main ingredient and then add a few items listed above as filler. You really can't add everything without making 20 bags of the stuff. So I pick 3 to 4 items which typically makes 2 to 4 bags.

In this basic mix, I used about 8 cocktail shrimps and 4 different plankton foods from the LFS. The goal of this food batch was to feed newly added anthias -- thus high on plankton. Which worked perfectly and they now feed on my typical homemade mixes as listed above.

At the very end I add in spiriluna flake and shreaded nori. Looks like this once frozen:

I just snap off about 2 to 3 inch chunks (for a fully stocked 180) twice a day. Let thaw in a cup of tank water. Use a turkey baster to dose to the tank via squirting it into the stream of a gemini powerhead.

 

[Anonymous]

the oilyness of the smelt and tuna, is it a problem? is this why when i add current feed from LFS my skimmer starts churning out more bubbles? the cocktail shrimp thing sounds great, i do house anthias, but i can't say i've ever seen them for sale uncooked.

now the nori, should i add this if i keep no fish that are primary algae feeders (anthias, perc. and a mandarin)?

the crustaceans i hear should be blended with the shells intact?

 

[Tremelle]

I doubt there was a fat in the mixture. Some people use a gelatin to hold it all to gether when they freeze it. A gelatin is used in the commerically available cubes you buy.

 

[Mac1]

I don't add too much smelt or Tuna, because of the oils. I think that the oil's are an important part of the diet, so I think _some_ are OK, but limit how much of that I put in. Most skimmer's will pick up in activity when feeding, a lot of people shut their's down during that time.

You probably have seen them for sale raw - they're blue, not pink.

I suppose I would put a lot less Nori in than usual if I didn't have a big fat tang, but still like it, and find the clownfish eat it readily. I think the dried stuff absorbs lots of the juices from the fish-slurry, and become rather tasty.

I generally mix my crab meat half-half w/ shells and w/o. For the most part the pieces w/ shells in it get spit out or ignored by the fish, and it ends up as Hermit Chow. That's not to say that the crab's don't pick it clean (and then the worms, and the bugs, and...)

Tremelle - Ironically enough, that was one of the main reason's I started making my own food! Couldn't find the USRDA for "Gel Binder", and figured there was no sense adding it to my tank!

- Mac

 

[Anonymous]

Out here in Iowa, the seafood is iffy at best. I have tried to buy scallops at several different places and everytime they were pretty gross, kind of smelly and just "off", so I tend to stick to a few foods that are consistently fresh seeming, mainly salmon, squid and cocktail shrimp. All my fish just love squid, and it is one of the cheapest seafoods. You get the side bonus of having the girl working the seafood counter try to hide the fact that she is totally grossed out by the tentacles. I just blend in the cuisenart until a mush forms, usually I add some golden pearls, maybe some shredded nori too. Spoon into ziplock bags, squeeze all the air from the bags and freeze. Lately I have been adding some flake food, because the owner of my LFS swears that if you add flake to your frozen food, it will teach finicky fish to eat flake food.

 

[Anonymous]

i just noticed the shrimp in the pic. aren't the shrimp they refer to as cocktail shrimp really small? i see that size in the pic sold as prawns. i don't know for sure, guess it doesn't matter. either they're bigger than what i imagined cocktail shrimp or that's a tiny little cuisinart.

 

[EmilyB]

Mine is on my website and is just a variation of Bob Fenners. Things go nuts for it, it is a mixture of shellfish, shrimp, sea bass, nori, vitamins, krill, etc.

I have used it for over three years. It uses gelatin, which Bob told me is also to bind the Omega3 fatty acids so they don't just end up floating around the tank, but are more readily consumed.

 

[reefland]

i just noticed the shrimp in the pic. aren't the shrimp they refer to as cocktail shrimp really small? i see that size in the pic sold as prawns. i don't know for sure, guess it doesn't matter. either they're bigger than what i imagined cocktail shrimp or that's a tiny little cuisinart.

I've always called them cocktail shrimp, food store just says frozen shrimp. They are about 3 inches in size. I remove the tail and shell while frozen. If you left the shell I'm sure something would still eat it.

 

[Anonymous]

SALAD SHRIMP! thats what i was thinking of.

 

[Anonymous]

well i certainly will give one of these a shot or maybe all. gonna print them off now. thanks to all who shared.