Printable View
Hi everyone,
I've kept fish for most of my life but not the discus. My wife doesn't mind me getting back into fish keeping but she hates the smell of the fish food and water changes. I do try to minimize any smells. Although I understand the importance of beef heart in the discus diet, me making a recipe from scratch might end up with me being single. Plus I am not crazy about making my own beef heart mix. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks !!!
Feeding BH is not a necessity and in fact although many use it, it is not a "natural" food for the discus. People mostly use it due to its high protein content for grow outs. There are many alternative foods including FDBW, many pellets, flakes, etc that are as good nutrition wise. I personally do not feed BH since they are messy and foul up the water. Cheers
I'm a life time devotee to using beefheart to raise discus, but am also sensitive to the issues you mentioned. You can buy frozen beefheart. I get it from the California Blackworm guy and it comes in 1-LB frozen sheets. I'll defrost a sheet for 20 minutes, cut it into cubes and keep it in the freezer. Before leaving for work in the morning, I throw 2 - 3 cubes into the tank. No smell, no greasy hands, nothing in the tank by the end of the day. I also feed dry foods, but nothing comes close to getting good growth than beef.
Beef heart does better than frozen worms, frozen mysis, etc. in terms of putting on size and is also a cleaner source of either. Of course, discus do not encounter cows in the Amazon. But they don't run into flakes, pellets or other dried foods in general.
I have a local butcher shop make the beefheart for me. If I have room in the freezer I can order 50lbs. of beefheart from SFBB.
The beefheart is messy therefore it is the last meal for the day before the waterchange.
Cliff
When I had discus I used to grate frozen deer heart with a parmesan cheese grater. The finished product looked like blood worms and was a much cleaner feed than when I made a fine ground deer heart mix. My discus loved the pure heart and i also used Al's AFDBW's w spinach :thumbsup:
Dan,Quote:
Originally Posted by danotaylor
I thought I was the only one using a cheese grater.
Cliff
I shaved the frozen food with cheese grater to feed the discus fry
.Attachment 129595
Cliff I actually got the idea from Carol's sticky article in the food & nutrition section...clearly I'm in good company ;)
Before the hybrid discus I bred wild discus feeding beef heart only. Three years ago came back to discus and began with beef heart until is soon discovered freez dry black worms. I feed only black worms and several variations of pellets.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fast Dog