Originally Posted by
MotorCityAquatics
I make beef heart that won't dissolve in the tank. It's very easy to feed and stores really well in the freezer. It's especially good for growing out small discus and angels because small fish can eat it and, considering the growth the fish experience, it's CHEAP!!
I usually make around 12 pounds at a time. It ends up costing about $3 per pound when I'm done:
I take beef heart chunks which I can buy at a local grocery store, and cut all the vicera off the meat so that it is perfectly clean and lean. This usually accounts for almost 1/3 of the weight of the original meat.
To the beef heart I add shelled shrimp at a little less than a 3 to 1 ratio (about 3oz shrimp to 13oz B H). I do this because I am told it helps the fish color up.
I keep a pot of water boiling on the stove and add two packs of geletan to each cup of water.
Put the beef heart/shrimp into a food processor and add the gelatin mixture to the meat, about 1/2 cup of liquid gelatin per pound. The trick is to not add it boiling hot or it will cook the meat. I keep some in a measuring cup on the counter. The water helps the meat to process and the gelatin makes it hold together in the tank.
To this I add 1 1/4 oz of a good quality flake.
The flake helps it bind and rounds out the nutritional values a bit.
I usually put in 1/3 teaspoon of repti-vite.
Repti-vite is a supplement for desert-dwelling lizards. It adds vitamins and calcium to the diet which I have been told is important to modern discus who have been bred to have larger finnage and therefore longer bones and a greater need for calcium than the wilds. I also figure the natural diet consists of lots of bugs and insect shells contain a lot of calcium.
Run the processor until the meat has the same basic consistancy as pudding.
Dump each processor load into a stainless steel bowl. I do this until I have the whole batch made then I stir it together so it's consistant.
It's important to stir slowly from the bottom up and AVOID introducing air into the mix or the food will float and that will suck.
Probe the mixture slowly up and down with a potato masher being careful not to lift the masher out of the goop. This gets air out so the food won't float.
Spoon the food into zipper bags at 4oz per bag, stack them flat in the freezer.
The gelatin holds it together in the water and makes it easy to tear into flat chunks even when it's frozen. The food floats on the surface for a few seconds then it sinks as soon as it melts. Even if the bag sits out too long and melts while you are feeding your tanks the food stays in it's shape, just like a Jello mold.
I sometimes add some frozen blood worms or color bits to one or two bags after I am done processing which helps to acclimate new fish to this food. I have also added Gel-Tek parasite medications to it when I was feeding it to new wild hypancistrus plecs.
Most of my tanks are bare bottomed. The ones that have gravel also have corys and usually a couple of clown loaches to clean up any bits stuck in between rocks and other hard to get places.
It's still not as clean as bloodworms. I don't think anything is.
Now, you can do all this OR
you can just get a salad shooter