i make my own food for my discus. its a blend of market shrimp, freeze dried bloodworms, and pellets. i grounded up the shrimp in a hand processor, then mixed in freeze dried worms, and then crushed some pellets to get it into small bits and then mixed that in the mixture as well. filled in bags and then frozen. broken into chunks for easy feeding.
What is a good diet for discus.
- Thread starter freshjivves
- Start date
5am;2495511; said:
Same here. This will work, but you can do better. Start with .5 kilos of market shrimp, and 200 mg of peas, 50 mg of broccoli, and 50 mg of banana. 100 mg of carrots, some paprika (trust me, it's great for them), some garlic extract (you could be lazy and just add some garlic guard by seachem), and I use about 100mg of chicken livers (those nice liver oils).
A special touch I like to add is growing my own brine shrimp, gutloading them and adding them (make sure to separate shells/eggs!).
You could also add:
-Bloodworms
-Mysis Shimp
-Fish filets (I prefer not though)
-Brussel Sprouts (sparingly)
-Boiled egg yolk
Few tips, do not cook anything... just toss it all in a food process and blend into a paste. For 1 kilo of food add 4 gelatin packets (mixed with boiling water first), stir and throw in the fridge, then freeze until you need it. Add 1 packet for every 250 mg you go over on bulk weight. This isn't super precision, i just use one of those $5 food scales from target.
Also, leave everything on the shrimp. You won't have to worry about it hurting the fish (hey, it's in a gel!), and it has lots of extra nutrients.
Forgot to add, this should not be fed at every feeding. You vary your diet with other foods because the food is not nutritionally balanced. You should vary your diet with this stuff because it is too nutritionally packed. Feed once a day with this and once a day with normal pellets/flakes.
I'm studied this subject extensively. There is no best diet for discus. As long as the diet is varied, and relatively high in protein, it will work. Also important, will they eat it? Some discus are literal garbage disposers, and will eat anything offered. Others can be extremely picky, and would seem rather to go without food rather than eat anything but their favorites. An extensively varied diet seems to help somewhat in keeping them from becoming too accustomed to eating just one or two different foods. So, just feed them different stuff, and a lot of protein, and they should be fine.
ok. not to derail but im feeding my discus my special blend every feeding, at least 2-3 times a day. not heavy feedings though, just a 3/4in square (1/4in thick) of my homemade food. should i switch it up?? i also have frozen beefheart, frozen bloodworms, and freeze dried bloodworms on my self. my wilds dont really like brineshrimp or misis... they just spit them out...
Besides all the above mine absolutely love meal worms and go mental for prawns, you can gut load the worms with anything you like and they really like tetramin colour and cichlid gold
Cheers steve
Cheers steve
i heard dafnia is good to feed your discus. so i got some yesterday and fed it to them. it looked like they were eating it but it looked to small for the to get enough. is their a special way to feed them.
I used to feed a pellet food to mine. I think it was made by Tetra. I know it was a small red pellet, advertised as slow sinking--ideal for discus. I supplemented their diet with live white worms I raised myself and a homemade "beefheart" ( I used venison heart instead of beef) recipe.
marinebiologist;2503419; said:
Yes, they are tiny little critters. Larger discus will mostly just ignore them, unless they munch on a whole, intact cube. Can be very useful for smaller discus, and other small fish. My cardinals love them.
hillbilly;2501738; said:
True, there is no "complete" diet for discus out there....yet. I can say that there is a discus-specific pellet diet in the works that would become a "complete" diet once all feed trials and research is done. Hopefully in about 6 months or so there will be beta testers of the food doing individual feed studies. Extensive research has been done already on this subject...this feed formulation is just bringing it all together and then working on palatability issues.
-Ryan
