[DIY] Cichla Food : Cheap, fast and simple way. [FIXED]

[Lucas Fontenele]

This topic is about a simple tutorial to help the ones who need a nice and nutritive low cost food, fast and easy to do, that can be easily accepted for your fish, even the ones that arent pellet trained yet. I will try to discuss here why doing it this way and why choosing some ingredients rather than others.

Ingredients:





1- Gelatin without flavour and colour. (this will be the agglutinative, its just proteins which are very well degraded by the digestive system of a carnivore fish different of any flour used in pellets)
2- Fish fillet (I advice you to choose the one they are used to it at start, but after theyre used to your ownfood you should move to saltwater fish since they have a more wide range of minerals and sometimes more omega fat, which is important for fish reproductive metabolism)
3- Frozen artemia or whole shrimp.
4- Pellets
5- Vitamin C


I choose the fish rather than the whole fish because it has lots of low quality materials that would make the moisture less nutritive, like bones, cartilage and scales. The lack of nutrients for structures like bones and cartilages can be found in the crustaceans shells of artemia and the whole shrimp.


You may ask yourself why using pellets to make pellets, and theres a simple answer: I couldnt find a cheap source of dried spirulina/chlorella or any microalgae yet. The spirulina countains a wide range of important vitamins for fish and its easily assimilated by them. I think it alone would take the place of the pellets giving enough vitamins. Remember to dont use a lot of spirulina because its reported to make ''Spirulina Spots'' in african cichlids and the Cichla digestive system isnt prepared to proccess great amounts of vegetal matter.


I choose to add vitamin C because in the boiling a lot of vitamins would be lost, and one of the most sensitive is the C vitamin. Tt plays lots of roles in fish metabolism. It affects growth and reproduction and also prevent diseases.


How to do:

Cut the fish in smaller pieces, and add the ingredients in the blender.




You should add some water to make it easier to blend (Blending it is a pretty tough). But remember, no more than 100 mL or you will be screwing the moisture and giving water for your fish. To make it easier to blend you can also defrost the ingredients before using.





The moisture should look like this, its very consistent.





Follow the instructions of your gelatin and add the blended mix. Let it boil to make water evaporate a bit and sterilize.



After a small time boiling it will look like this, and you will put it to rest. Here if you have added much water it will appear, you can try to take it away, but the better was not adding much water.


When its not hot anymore, you add the vitamins you choose to use. Im using 200 mg of vitamin C in solution/KG of food, which is enough and safe.
If you arent doing the moisture with pellets, you should add the spirulina powder in this point to make sure the temperature wont damage the vitamins.





Put the mix in a ice tray and rest it in the freezer.





The final product is as mass of food. You can cut it in any shape you want to offer for your fish and can also save it already cut.
Remember before throwing it in the tank to warm it and clean it in a recipient with water to make it easier to eat.
The weak point is because you always need to save it on the freezer, because its a gelatin.


Testing [HD Video]:


I dont need a better proof to show its working. My fish loves it, theyre showing nice colors are healthy and really fat.

[video=youtube;kTWC7Qdkb4A]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTWC7Qdkb4A[/video]

 

[ksmith088]

I am going to try this. Would you consider adding garlic to the mixture for any picky cichla? I don't want to ruin the whole batch if I do.

 

[cephalofoil]

i just did this yesterday except i used a mix of tilapia, walleye, salmon, cichlid pellets, garlic, cichlid pellets and paprika for my piranha food. They use paprika in gel diets at the vancouver aquarium for the piraya there due to the beta-carotene and lutein in paprika or something. helps with orange and yellow color.

you can buy spirulina powder at some health food stores. just so you know for next time. also astaxanthin powder is available, helps with red color.

 

[Lucas Fontenele]

i just did this yesterday except i used a mix of tilapia, walleye, salmon, cichlid pellets, garlic, cichlid pellets and paprika for my piranha food. They use paprika in gel diets at the vancouver aquarium for the piraya there due to the beta-carotene and lutein in paprika or something. helps with orange and yellow color.

you can buy spirulina powder at some health food stores. just so you know for next time. also astaxanthin powder is available, helps with red color.

Yeah bro, but Spirulina is too expensive here and hardly found, I prefer to start producing it.

You can use terrestrial vegetables for sure, but I think algae is more easily assimilated for fish. Terrestrial vegetables would be too much for a carnivore fish to digest, so you should use it moderately.

Spirulina alone would make a huge difference in color since she is full of pigments.

 

[Jtruong]

very nice!

 

[ksmith088]

The only modification I did was add Nourish so I could replenish the vitamins that were lost and add a few amino acids. Felt like I came out with a good consistency with minimal water added. I used 1 cup of water with 1 packet of gelatin. I couldn't believe it, it started a feeding frenzy. My one Kel who has been very shy and skittish was going nuts.

My only problem was it would break up relatively fast once in their mouth. It would stay very solid once it hit the aquarium water though. Maybe the pieces were too big so I will try smaller pieces next time. Maybe add another packet of gelatin.

Hopefully we can get more to experiment and finely tune the recipe. It is great when I turned a quarter cup of NLS pellets into a months worth of food by adding a tilapia fillet, some shrimp, gelatin, and nourish.

Thanks Lucas!

 

[cpm6t]

Thanks Lucas. Can see the pictures now and process is much clear to me now. I'm going to try this out. Using only massivore is too expensive for me and I can get fresh sea food at a very lost cost here.

 

[cpm6t]

I did a sample batch. It was only with shrimp and fish fillets. The only question I have is it disintegrates bit too much when I throw it in the water (too many small particles get in to water). Does that mean the gelatine quantity is not enough compared to the other ingredients?

 

[Lucas Fontenele]

I did a sample batch. It was only with shrimp and fish fillets. The only question I have is it disintegrates bit too much when I throw it in the water (too many small particles get in to water). Does that mean the gelatine quantity is not enough compared to the other ingredients?

Yep, maybe the proportion of gelatin was low because of the amount of water, as I was speaking with Smith.

Remember cleaning it in water before throwing in water.

 

[cpm6t]

Just wanted to report the success of this method.

I've been using this for about 1 month now and the fish loves it. I feel better about this method because,
1. I know for sure what is going in to the fish food.
2. It is cheaper than the branded fish food.
3. Fish eat it without a fuss.
4. I can add a huge variety of stuff with this approach. When I was feeding them frozen the fish would only get used to a couple of varieties and won't take anything else. In a typical batch I add at least 5 varieties of fish fillets and it keeps on changing depending on what I buy for our home consumption in a given week.

I thought of putting some pictures of the process. It is pretty much same as Lucas showed.

1. What goes in. Shrimp is there every time, others can vary from batch to batch.


2. After the blender. I figured that if I make it too fine in the blender, the water will get cloudy when fish eat it. With grinding to a lesser extent the clouding problem is reduced.


3. After adding the gelatin mix.


4. Ready to go in to the freezer.


Sometimes I add pieces of massivore in to the mix. I have two bags on Kens fish food arriving this week. I am not very sure whether this is needed though.
I add small whole fish and fish fillets in to the mix. I am also not sure whether I need to add vitamins and greens to the mixture too.

I have to admit that the pellets are super convenient though, just get them out of the tin and put them in. With this I have to make it myself but 15 minutes, once in two weeks is nothing to complain about.

Thanks Lucas for suggesting this.