# DIY - Food



## TankAaron (Aug 8, 2014)

I am looking for recipes for DIY food for out inhabitants. I was searching to see if it is safe to feed them gelatin; as in mix the food in gelatin to make it easier to serve. I saw some neat ideas, and thought I'd start a thread here for everyone to share their recipes.

Post as many recipes as you'd like, and try to post what you'd feed with it; carnivore, herbivore, omnivore, detritivore, etc.

Here's one:

Mixed veggies (can also add fruit)
Gelatin

Steam, or boil vegetables, and fruit.
Blend them.
Mix prepared gelatin into blend.
Chill.

I'd chill the mixture in a cylinder shaped container, or a sheet, so I can cut them in to wafer sized yummies for my shrimp.


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## HX67 (Sep 24, 2009)

I make a mixture of the following:










400 g shrimp (with shells)
400 g pollock
200 g (blue) mussel
400-500 g peas
400-500 g spinach
2 carrots (missing from the pic)
2 eggs (with shells)
pork/beef heart
beef liver (also missing from the pic)
1 banana
a few cloves garlic
juice of 1 lemon
a bit of multivitamin
spirulina powder
gelatin

The only ingredient I cook is liver.
Everything is chopped raw into a fine pulp in a mixer/mincer.
Gelatin is prepared with hot water and mixed into the pulp.

Pulp is packed into bags, thinly enough so the frozen sheet is easy to break into appropriate pieces.

Bags are chilled for a few hours to let the gelatin set.
Then they are frozen.

End result:









(The color is deep green, almost blackish from the spirulina I added lavishly into this lot)

My fish, shrimps and aquatic amphibians love it.


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## Yo-han (Oct 15, 2010)

Funny to see a post about this because I'm reading up into this as well the last few weeks. For my new 1000+L aquarium I want the best food I can have for the fish. So, while most home made foods are made to save money, I don't care, but I want to make something good (for a reasonable price if possible off course)

So I gathered as much info on the web as possible and combined it all in one document. You can read it here if you like:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pvqsvm9cj09f83z/Homemade%20Fishfood.docx?dl=0

My plan now is to make two versions. A carnivorous food and a herbivorous food. Both will contain a little from the other group as well, but in my experience, animals eat what they need. So a herbivore won't eat animal protein all the time if vegetables are available. The omnivorous fish need to eat from both

The herbivore food will contain 70% vegetable proteins and some animal protein is included as well (when algae eaters graze algae, they ingest lots of microscopic animals as well) and the carnivore food will be 75% animal protein. The rest will be spirulina and vegetables because the animals they normally eat are gut loaded with green stuff as well.

For the carnivore food:

So far from all the articles I found out that the best animal protein sources are:
- Krill
- Earthworms
- Whole herring meal
- Whole salmon meal
- Clam/mussel meat
- Artemia
- Shrimp

It's important to add the whole animal, not just filet, everything is good!

Add some vegetables, spirulina, chlorella, garlic, dried sea weed, calcium montmorillonite clay and vitamins for the remaining 25% and your fish get everything they need.

As a binder it's best to use dried ingredients like sea weed or dried paprika. But agar, gelatin and egg yolk are used as well (although discussions remain about what is best).

For the herbivore food:

- Kelp = sea weed = nori from the sushi
- Peas
- Spinach
- Banana
- Bell peppers
- Kale (one of the less known but IME wonderful vegies)
- Carrot
- Zucchini
- etc.

The remaining 30% should contain animal proteins like krill/shrimp etc.

Add quite some spirulina, chlorella, some garlic and some vitamins and you got some great food.

I want these two foods to be good enough to be the only foods I give, so I'm still calculating some vitamins and protein content from each ingredient to find out the best blend. When I actually make them, I'll post it here!


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## Yo-han (Oct 15, 2010)

Anyone any idea of how much spirulina you can add? Can you use for example 50%?


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## Yo-han (Oct 15, 2010)

Someone adviced me to use spirulina in the 10-20% range. Only question I've left before I start making it. What would the best binding agent be. I found multiple suggestions, all with pros and cons.

- gelatin
- agar
- ...

Anybody experience or any idea what would be best?


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## HX67 (Sep 24, 2009)

As mentioned above, I use gelatine.
Haven't used anything else, so can't really give any comparison.

I use about 3 tablespoons of powdered gelatine to a kg of pulp, premixed into boiling hot water and then mixed thoroughly into the pulp.
Pulp is then bagged and let cool down for several hours to let gelatine set. Then it's frozen.

It keeps food pretty firm and well clumped even when it melts when fed to fish. Sinks when melts.


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## Seattle_Aquarist (Mar 7, 2008)

TankAaron said:


> I am looking for recipes for DIY food for out inhabitants. I was searching to see if it is safe to feed them gelatin; as in mix the food in gelatin to make it easier to serve. I saw some neat ideas, and thought I'd start a thread here for everyone to share their recipes.
> 
> Post as many recipes as you'd like, and try to post what you'd feed with it; carnivore, herbivore, omnivore, detritivore, etc.
> 
> ...


Hi TankAaron,

At our January GSAS meeting we presented a talk by a couple of our members that breed a large variety of species and make their own fish foods. Here is a video of the 1 hour presentation; enjoy!


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## Yo-han (Oct 15, 2010)

HX67 said:


> As mentioned above, I use gelatine.
> Haven't used anything else, so can't really give any comparison.
> 
> I use about 3 tablespoons of powdered gelatine to a kg of pulp, premixed into boiling hot water and then mixed thoroughly into the pulp.
> ...


_"Agar-agar is made from pressed seaweed and offers an impressive difference in nutrient content over animal gelatin. It sets very quickly with or without refrigeration."_

_"Since gelatin foods fill the fish up quickly, it's important to note the nutritional superiority of Agar-agar over animal gelatin. We should also consider how filling gelatins are when formulating our recipes, to ensure that they are packed with highly nutritious food so the fish isn't eating too much gelatin alone. "_

What about these quotes?


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## Yo-han (Oct 15, 2010)

Seattle_Aquarist said:


> Hi TankAaron,
> 
> At our January GSAS meeting we presented a talk by a couple of our members that breed a large variety of species and make their own fish foods. Here is a video of the 1 hour presentation; enjoy!


Wow great, haven't had time to watch th entire presentation yet, but certainly will!


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## HX67 (Sep 24, 2009)

Yo-han said:


> _"Agar-agar is made from pressed seaweed and offers an impressive difference in nutrient content over animal gelatin. It sets very quickly with or without refrigeration."_
> 
> _"Since gelatin foods fill the fish up quickly, it's important to note the nutritional superiority of Agar-agar over animal gelatin. We should also consider how filling gelatins are when formulating our recipes, to ensure that they are packed with highly nutritious food so the fish isn't eating too much gelatin alone. "_
> 
> What about these quotes?


According to them there's no question about the superiority of agar-agar.

The only thing to maybe consider evaluating the quotes I'd have is that the amount of gelatin needed is very little in relative quantity. Thus, how big an affect it makes on the light of those quotes might be less dramatic than seen at first glance&#8230;

But as I said, haven't used agar-agar. Might try it next time I make a batch.


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## Yo-han (Oct 15, 2010)

I made the food with agar-agar. I made two versions as mentioned earlier. To be honest, my fish didn't seemed too eagerly eating it at first (but my goal wasn't a good tasting food but a healthy food). It took a few days but now they seem to love it. Especially my Panaqolus, which I saw once every few months before. Now it comes out during the daytime to eat. 
Micronemacheilus, Sewellia, all kind of tetra, Danio, Rasbora and shrimp eat it very well. My Apistogramma papagei male is always the first above the food. He eats very slowly but is more colorful than ever before!

One thing I noticed is that they seem to eat way less. I guess this is because this isn't full with fillers like commercially available food and full of water compared to frozen food. So be careful how much you feed!


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