Home Made Frozen Foods

[KittyKat]

I'm about to make another batch of home made frozen food. Anyone interested in some? If you are, tell me what type of fish you keep or what type of food you're after and I will customise it to fit the average. It will be generally aimed at young community fish as I will be feeding it to baby cichlids, tetras and Corys. As with all higher-protein fish foods, it cannot be used as a staple, but it should be fine to feed it every other day to growing fish and a few times per week as treats to adult fish. Price wise, it will be around 1.20-1.50 per 50 gram slab depending on what goes into it.

The best recipe to date for growing fish contained spirulina, garlic, beef heart, decapsulated brine shrimp and spinach, which came to 1.20 per 50 grams. This time, I'm provisionally planning to add fish food to bulk it up a bit, but also to add blackworm and egg yolk which are quite high in protein, so the price might be a bit higher.

 

[Jay1983]

I would be very interested in some, My stocking is mainly small tetra and dwarf cichlids... so sounds good

 

[KittyKat]

I'm feeding the aforementioned mix to some SA dwarfs right now and it does give them quite nice colours, so should work for your fish quite well. I'm going to pick up the beef heart today, and will probably make up the mix(es?) tomorrow.

 

[Jay1983]

Sounds great let me know when and how you'd like paying

 

[Box]

I'll have some kat for my small community fish
Aspistos/golden eyes small tetras etc

 

[KittyKat]

Sounds great let me know when and how you'd like paying

If it freezes in time, I can try sending it tomorrow, so would be nice to get paid this evening or tomorrow morning. Bank transfer is simplest, but I'll also take Paypal and Google Checkout if you cover the fees or cash if you don't mind waiting till next week for me to send them.

Roughly how many slabs do you think you'll want? They're about 10*15 cm in size and each is around 50 grams.

I'll have some kat for my small community fish
Aspistos/golden eyes small tetras etc

Hey, that's similar fish to what we have, so it'll be perfect for you

 

[Tizer]

Kitty, without wanting to divulge your recipe to the world, would you PM some of the details? I've been knocking up some feeds myself for the last few months for home use (no plans to sell any!). Be interesting to know your ratios / mix and use by date etc. At the moment i'm trying to put together a paste food that will smear on the glass and actually stick to it! Working on the sticking part at the moment

 

[Plecc]

That sounds interesting!
To make the paste stick and be a bit less water soluble, would you need to make the mix more oily / greasy?

 

[KittyKat]

Kitty, without wanting to divulge your recipe to the world, would you PM some of the details? I've been knocking up some feeds myself for the last few months for home use (no plans to sell any!). Be interesting to know your ratios / mix and use by date etc. At the moment i'm trying to put together a paste food that will smear on the glass and actually stick to it! Working on the sticking part at the moment

I'm an Open Source type of person, so the a couple of the best recipes are available to the world already I'm offering these foods to others not to make money, but so that I have a higher turnover and can try more recipes (although if this works, I might do it for money in the long term, but most likely will reduce my own costs by buying ingredients in bulk rather than raising the price)

Baby cichlid mix: http/blog.natureaquarium.co.uk/?p=815
Community fish mix: http/blog.natureaquarium.co.uk/?p=836

I have high hopes for tonight's mix, I decided to use fish instead of fish food for bulk in the end as it was much cheaper. The recipe should be going up later tonight or tomorrow! It would be interesting to see some of your recipes and techniques, if you don't mind sharing… I will test this lot to see how well it would stick to the glass tomorrow, so will let you know whether it works or not from frozen.

 

[Tizer]

currently waiting on my gelatin but will update soon if the mix works!

 

[KittyKat]

Sounds good

I've made up two mixes, the only difference between them is that one has blackworm added to it, and the other one does not. Most of the slabs are between 50 and 60 grams, I can offer the first for £1.20 per 50 grams and the blackworm one for £1.40 per 50 grams. The blackworms are quite expensive, but I find that they're well worth the money and are really good for getting difficult fish to feed.

 

[Tizer]

Well, i've got white fish (Coley), muscles, prawns, Spirulina, spinach leaves, peas, cress and egg yolk ready to play with this weekend. Just a case of getting the mix right! Hoping I can get away without using too much gelatin, will see.

 

[kcartwright856]

Gelatin is quite difficult for fish to digest and makes for a poor binder.

I use Repashy for all of my gel food needs. Highly-digestible binders, no fillers, economical, doesn't need refrigeration or time to set...

I could go on and on. I highly recommend checking it out.

 

[KittyKat]

Gelatin is quite difficult for fish to digest and makes for a poor binder.

Could you point me to some research to back this up? My searches have only come up with Repashy saying anything negative about it… and it would be very useful to know for sure.

In terms of binding, I find that it works reliably well: I use approximately 10 grams per 500 grams of food, which is enough to make the food not fall apart in water. I have made up generic beef heart mix which I did not use any gelatin for before, but that really did tend to fall apart quite quickly after entering water, so spread too thin for the fish to get at properly.

I use Repashy for all of my gel food needs. Highly-digestible binders, no fillers, economical, doesn't need refrigeration or time to set...

The aim of making my own foods is not to have gel foods, but to have the ingredients that I want in them. Making dry foods or freeze-dried foods is not very practical at home, which is why the foods end up being frozen with a binding agent.

Unfortunately, Repashy fish foods are not available on this side of the pond (from what I can see), and I have had quite a bit of trouble finding information about them, so it would be very helpful if you could help out a bit. How much do you normally pay for the feed? What are the ingredients and nutritional information? What is the benefit over dry or live foods?

 

[Tizer]

I've never heard of Gelatin being a poor binder either and I've been researching home made foods for the last couple of weeks quite a lot! Nothing i have read has been negative regarding fish consumption!