Meeting Notes

August, 2011

Speaker: Bob Dozier
Topic: "Making Your Own Fish Food"

Main ingredient: beef heart, turkey hearts or chicken hearts

Secondary Ingredients:
Large whole shrimp (people food shrimp!)
scallops
baby food soft strained: peas, carrots, bananas, sweet potatoes

Additional Ingredients: spirulina powder, Naturrose powder (source of carotenoids), liquid vitamins (Vita-Chem), raw chicken egg, baby brine shrimp., fish eggs, flake food, powdered foods (golden pearls, freeze dried rotifers). One Chicken egg.

His whole notion is that he wants a meaty food for his fish but he wants it to be well-rounded. He rotates his food. When he gives beef heart food he wants it to bring out their color.

Preparing Food:

• Beef heart – clean off all fat and gristle
• Turkey or chicken hearts – same cleaning, but easier
• Shrimp – two frames of thought
  • Take off shell and clean out guts
  • Leave shells on (shells have nutrients in them that fish need)
• Scallops – easy – just clean

Making the Food: in a food processor.

Ingredients:
beef heart
shrimp
scallops after a rinse
baby food
peas
carrots
bananas (Jack Watley wrote an article about using bananas years ago – adds potassium)
sweet potatoes
spirulina powder - about one tablespoon
Golden Pearls larval reef - about a 1/2 teaspoon
Nutrurose - about a 1/2 teaspoon
liquid vitamins (shake) - about 1 tablespoon
Cyclopeze flake - about 1 tablespoon
one tablespoon of brine shrimp
1/2 teaspoon of copapods
one egg

Turn on the food processor and blend for a couple of minutes. Blend until it gets to the consistency of peanut butter.

Put wax paper down on and spread it into slabs. Create layers of 3/8 or 1/2 inch. Put in freezer with sheets of wax paper on both sides. Freeze. Take box cutter and slice a strip off at 1/4 inch slice.

For discus throw in tank frozen and "they tear it to pieces." The fish eat it so quickly there's nothing left. For bettas he lets it thaw and he takes tweezers and he puts little pieces in the betta tanks.

He does not need Agar powder or gelatin. "Perhaps the egg holds it together?" he said.

Garlic can be added to the food just before you feed. Add it onto the food so that the fish get it fresh.

He started to see a big difference when he started adding peas and carrots.

Question from the audience - Does it cloud the tank? Bob doesn't have any problem with the food clouding the tank.

Feed to: Angelfish, Discus, Bettas.

For fry: small fish will eat it. "I don't feed it to the discus fry", said Bob. The discus and fry get fed microworms and BBS. As they get older he adds Golden Pearl formulas (200-300 micron) and he increases the size. They'll eat frozen bloodworms. The way he makes it, it is too big for small fry. He starts cutting it over for juveniles when they are a quarter to 1/2 dollar size in discus. With bettas he waits until they are an inch long. Bloodworms are safer for bettas until they get to an inch.

Bob's beefheart is purchased at the Springfield Butcher, fresh. Freezing doesn't matter. Safeway meat dept. has it at times - if not, call to order.

Question from the audience: Can Livebearers eat it? Bob said, "Swordtails yes, but mollies are plant eaters." Might try doing a food with a spinach or duckweed base.

You probably could use fish from the supermarket to mimic the fish's natural food in the wild. The scallops and shrimp work well with the beef heart.

Result of feeding this homemade food: Bettas get larger, discus get larger.

Samples were given to all the participants at the meeting. The author's angelfish and gouramis went nuts for it!

Submitted by Sherry Mitchell