Nice, Paul!
Hi, my melons are now 14 months old and growing with no issues. I am still feeding them 90% on wild Alaska salmon. They definitely seem to fill the brief on Al's talk that discus should be thick as a steak but with all the photos of pinched skinny fish I see from Italy and Germany I am starting to feel a bit "body conscious". Am I just being exposed to an excess of "size 0" fish?
P.S. with the wavemaker they are still getting plenty of exercise, they are not fat slobs!
Nice, Paul!
How often do you feed them? What comprises the other 10%?
Hi they still get fed quality discus granules at 6.30, then grated salmon at 10, 12, 2 pm, 4, 6 & 8pm then 2/3 water change.
Now that is the way it should be. Good job.
Mama Bear
Whoa. I gotta try that salmon then. Never did as I was always worried about mess in the tank, but with the tetras in now they should gobble up the little bits.
Do you get a sort of fatty film on top of the water though?
In all fairness it is actually not messy at all. I get these neat vacuum packed fillets of frozen wild Alaska salmon and just grate some with the metal thingy used to shred carrots held over a sieve, then rinse it under the tap (just to get rid of the smaller bits - no tetras in the tank!). Compared to the home-made recepies where ingredients are whizzed it actually holds together very well and it is a doddle to syphon off any leftovers. I use wild salmon because: a) a little concerned about all the residues in farmed salmon -ok most of them are in the skin and subcutaneous tissue but you never know, b) the farmed fish must be fattier as when I tried it I have noticed a greasy slick on the water surface.
My "fatties" are much conforted by your appreciation and not being considered obese. Just cleaned up after their last feed and done the daily water change, lights are dimming down for the night.
My neighbor and his wife spend most of their summer on the coast (Oregon) out in the ocean fishing. I trade him my veggies for fish. I get a lot a black rock fish from him (Very tasty white fish). I've got a few vacuum packs left from 2015 I thought I would try feeding to my fish. Any reason not to use this fish for that?
My gut feeling is it should be as good or thereabouts. Being a cold water marine fish there should be very little chance of passing any pathogens to a very warm freshwater species, as far as I can verify rockfish (genus Sebastes) contain a safe level of thiaminase while protein conten is almost as high (18% on avarage) compared to salmon (21%)
To be precise, farmed salmon is fattier than wild salmon. However, farmed salmon has far lower residues than wild salmon which live their entire lives in the ocean and accumulate higher levels of cadmium, lead, mercury and PCB's. Yes, this is well documented.
Still, very nice discus, Willie
At my age, everything is irritating.
They sure do look chunky Paul. Looking great actually.
We're here for a good time...not a long time
I think data is still very incomplete and controversial about this topic. Consistent testing is still patchy and there is a lot of variability depending on the location where the salmon is farmed, there appear to be higher levels of residues in fish farmed in Scotland and Norway (where most of the farmed salmon found over here comes from) and although things may have changed since they are being fed higher proportions of soy based feed this has raised levels of pesticides and other contaminants. Antibiotics and anti-parasitic drugs are also an issue. Another consideration is that most (but not all) of these substances are lipophilic and in wild salmon most of the body fat is in the skin and subcutaneous tissue (that is removed) while in farmed salmon there is also a fair share in the muscle.
This of mine is still an experiment in progress, the results up until now seem satisfactory but I want to see what happens over the years
Last edited by Paul Sabucchi; 08-27-2018 at 12:45 AM.