Home made Fish
Food Basics
Making home-made food for your pond fish is fairly easy to do. The process does
not require special skills or an overwhelming amount of work. It is simply a
matter of knowing what you need to make the food and how to go about doing it.
Preparation
When you make homemade fish food, you will first need to gather the proper
ingredients. This will ensure that you make the most nutritious food possible
for your fish.
You can make your own supplement
for general fish feeding that is high in DL-methionine (an important amino acid
in fish nutrition); Start with whole
salmon which is an excellent source of carotene for color (frozen or even
canned works), frozen peas, hard boiled egg, frozen or FD brine shrimp, duck
weed or spiulina powder, and fish oil (cod liver oil works fine). Blend this
mixture then add corn starch 
to the paste for dehydration.
Spread this paste on small strips of foil (or even wax paper if your dehydrator
does not get to hot). Make sure you leave room for air circulation.
Tips
- For
a frozen food, substitute the corn starch with unflavored gelatin powder.
- For
goldfish and koi, add wheat germ powder. Use this formula for African
Cichlids, except delete the wheat germ.
- For
more carnivorous fish increase the whole fish and decrease the spirulina
powder or duckweed. Calamari (squid) can be added too for carnivorous
fish, but make sure that all the ink is removed from whole squid.Use this
formula for Discus.
- For
spirulina powder, Spirulina One Flake can be substituted, but since this
already a complete diet for many fish, you can double the amount of this and
decrease other ingredients by comparable amounts.
Silicon Concentrate
|
|
Selcon Concentrate contains
omega-3 HUFA, vitamin B12 and pure stabilized vitamin C. Highly concentrated,
it is ideal for enriching rotifers and Artemia. It is excellent for
soaking freeze-dried foods. Boosts the nutritional value of live brine
shrimp.
|
|
Home
made food with Silicon Concentrate
|
|
Go to the FISH MARKET where you would buy FRESH FISH for
your family to eat and purchase the following:
1 or 2 uncooked shrimp
A few fresh clams (in the shell)
Scraps of fish fillet (tuna, cod, salmon, etc.)
1 Squid, cleaned but not cooked
A few scallops
|
Remove the shrimp and clams from their shells and pat the
meat dry on a paper towel. Wrap each shrimp and each clam with plastic wrap
and put in freezer overnight. Wrap each of the remaining ingredients
individually with plastic wrap and freeze overnight.
The next day, carefully
cut each frozen piece by using a serrated bread knife; trying to make thin
slices, the approximate thickness of a nickel. Continue to chop these small
frozen slices to the size of a grain of rice. Small pieces of fish will cut
best when frozen. Put all of the chopped pieces into a small bowl and add
enough Selcon Concentrate (shake first) to give the mixture a consistency
similar to cooked oatmeal.
You can add a few scoops of Masago, which is the
roe of Capelin or Smelt, commonly used by Japanese to make Sushi. The eggs
are colored bright orange, approximately 1 mm in diameter and relished by all
of the tank inhabitants. The mixture can now be thinly spread onto a sheet of
plastic wrap and frozen. Miniature ice cube trays or empty cube packs work
very well also. Make small batches of this recipe and make it frequently.
|
If you are looking for Budget
Home Made fish food you can try the following.
|
|
A mixture of ton, shrimp,
spinach, clams, and creel is most often used for feeding fish. Mix these
ingredients and freeze them in an ice cube tray. As a result, you have blocks
of food that are ready for your fish. When it is time to feed your pond fish,
take a frozen cube out of the tray and drop it into the pond. Your fish will
be happy and healthy, and you will reap the financial savings that come with
this homemade alternative to traditional pond fish food.
|
Here are basic percentages, please note that you can
change these percentages to suit your fish food requirements:
|
|
BASIC
|
GOLDFISH
|
CARNIVOURE
|
Whole Salmon:
|
25%
|
20%
|
30%
|
Peas:
|
25%
|
25%
|
15%
|
Egg:
|
20%
|
15%
|
25%
|
Brine shrimp:
|
15%
|
15%
|
15%
|
Spirulina Powder:
|
10%
|
15%
|
5%
|
Wheat Germ:
|
0%
|
5%
|
0%
|
Squid:
|
0%
|
0%
|
5%
|
Fish Oil:
|
2%
|
2%
|
2%
|
Corn Starch or Gelatin: 3% 3%
|
3%
|
3%
|
3%
|
There are many different foods on the market whilst variety is key, it’s still
vital to choose carefully.
Flake
foods
Flake foods are a mixture of food sources, normally with
additional vitamins and minerals, which provides a good balanced diet. It is
possible to feed only flake food and still provide all the basic nutritional requirements
of most fish. In most cases, flake food will form the main diet of your fish
and additional foods can be used as supplementary feeds. There are a number of
different brands of flake food available and some are noticeably better quality
than others. It is normally best to choose a well-known brand and not a cheaper
alternative.
Live
foods
Some live foods can be made or kept at home, which can
significantly reduce the cost. Earthworms are excellent meaty foods for
predatory fish. Most large fish are predatory. Brine shrimp can be easily
hatched and raised in a more controlled and sterile manner through the use of
hatching kits, available from most aquatic retailers Bloodworm, daphnia, Cyclops
and brine shrimp are all popular live foods and are available from many
retailers. These foods are normally sold in small amounts and will only last
for a few days before they start to die. If they are kept in a cool
environment, such as in a fridge, they may last a few days longer. Most fish
will noticeably enjoy live foods and they are a good source of protein, which
is used primarily for growth and repair. Live foods can be fed as a supplement
to a main diet or as a 'treat' food. Before purchasing live foods it is worth
checking to see which days your retailer receives deliveries, that way you can
obtain fresher food, which can be kept for longer.
Frozen
foods
There are a number of different frozen foods available and
these are also normally high in protein and make a good supplemental food.
Bloodworm, daphnia, and brineshrimp are ideal for smaller fish and foods such
as mussels, cockles, shrimp and lancefish are available for larger fish. Foods
that are higher in protein content (live foods, frozen foods & growth
foods) also result in higher amounts of waste in the form of ammonia and
nitrites. For this reason, they should not be used as a main diet but as
additional feeds two or three times a week.
Sinking
foods
Pellet and tablet or wafer foods are available which are
designed to sink to the aquarium floor. These types of food are ideal for
bottom feeding fish and catfish. Care should be taken when feeding sinking
foods, as it is easy to overfeed without knowing how much has been eaten and
how much has found its way into the substrate. To avoid this, sinking foods
should only be fed every other day and placed in a visible area where any
excesses can be removed after around an hour.
" Variation in diet is excellent for your fishes digestive and immune systems, and also allows you to
tailor diets to individual or groups of fish. Predatory species can be given
more meaty food, opportunist feeders can be fed small daphnia and brine shrimp,
and grazers can be given fruits and vegetables."
