Homemade reef food

[leftyfish]

I'm going to start making my own reef food. I was wondering if this recipe is missing anything?

3/4 lb of each: shrimp, oysters, mussels
5 live clams (not sure if live matters?)
1 container of sushi eggs
1 tsp cyclops
1 tsp spirulina powder
2 tsp golden pearls powder (I ordered 300-500 micron size)
A few squirts of selcon
Chop/shredded into little pieces green, red, brown, purple nori, maybe 1 Tbs each.

I plan to make and freeze the above mix. I don't want it to get freezer burned or be in the freezer for more than 3 months, so I will have to adjust the recipe base on my tank.

Inhabitants are LPS, SPS corals, tangs, foxface, perculas, engineer goby, banggai, and a chromis.

 

[Hondatek]

I think it looks good. Probably will last for a lot longer than 3 months depending on how much you feed.

 

[leftyfish]

I was thinking one cube a day, as I have the auto feeder give them flakes and pellets 3x/day already. Maybe 2 cubes when I get the ATS running. I think I'll 1/2 the recipe and see how long that lasts.

 

[leftyfish]

I used 6 oz of shrimp, mussels, and oysters and 5 clams.
1 tsp spirulina
2 tsp golden pearls
2 Tbs freeze dried cyclops
3 cups chopped nori mostly green, some brown and purple.
A few drops of
3 cups RO/DI water

I have the 4 tangs and foxface so I wanted a mix that had lots of greens for them. It turned into a nice thick dark green mix. I used mini freezer trays and made 4 months worth of food, feeding 2 cubes a day.

I bought bulk bags of spirulina, cyclops and golden pearls so that was $20 and will make a lot of food, the sea food was $20, I had selcon and Nori, but you can get about a year supply of nori at the Asian market for about $5-10 depending on how much you feed. I double bagged them in 30 day supply per bag to avoid freezer burn.

I was not able to find roe that didn't have salt or soy sauce mixed in, so I didn't add any

 

[Gregcoyote]

I have made my own food for years. MrX once stated he rolled his out flat in a big freezer bag, like brine shrimp comes in bulk. That has worked very well for portion control. I mix it up, sometimes I use some salmon rather than white fish, sometime fresh scallops, sometimes canned. It all works.

I buy nori in bulk on Amazon.com and they love it.

 

[Schism]

I have made my own food for years. MrX once stated he rolled his out flat in a big freezer bag, like brine shrimp comes in bulk. That has worked very well for portion control. I mix it up, sometimes I use some salmon rather than white fish, sometime fresh scallops, sometimes canned. It all works.

I buy nori in bulk on Amazon.com and they love it.

I just made a batch a few weeks ago and i also roll it out flat in a freezer bag and freeze it flat on a cookie sheet and the break it up when frozen.

You can also use wax paper on a cookie sheet and place on the wax paper a large piece of eggcrate and spread the mix out across the eggcrate. Freeze it, lift up the eggcrate and give it a few bangs, and you will have a bunch of perfect cubes fall out.

 

[carey]

Interesting trick with the egg crate! never would have thought of that!

That recipe looks good Lefty, I still havent gotten around to making my own food, I know i should but I think I;m just lazy. lol

 

[Schism]

Interesting trick with the egg crate! never would have thought of that!

That recipe looks good Lefty, I still havent gotten around to making my own food, I know i should but I think I;m just lazy. lol

I put it off for the longest time. Its not really as big a hassle i thought it would be. Been doing it a while now and its much cheaper and very healthy fish food. My fish go nuts for it.

 

[leftyfish]

Yeah, it took me all of 20 minutes (getting all the creatures out of the shells took the longest) and it ended up being 4 1/2 months of food. The fish love it and I'm very happy with the coral response.

I'm anal, so the little cubes work good for me, and I never was good about breaking off chunks an having it be the same amount. Also it allowed me to double bag them by monthly supply so I am not constantly exposing all of it every time I get food out.

I need to get an ATS going though!

 

[kdpuffer]

i actually just tried making my own food and found it very easy, minimal mess and hopefully the fish like it. i didnt add any greens as i still have alot in the tank lol. i went simple and defrosted and rinsed mysis, regular shrimp and salmon diced in the food processor. i added a bit of phyto and some nls pellets and made it into a thick paste thinning it with garlic guard. i did feed a little to the tank before feeding and everyone seemed to go nuts. i too opted to roll it out flat. i will make some more later with some nori and other greens for the foxface and blenny. as far as portioning it out when flat why not cut it instead of breaking it?

 

[Crazycajun]

I have made my own food for years. MrX once stated he rolled his out flat in a big freezer bag, like brine shrimp comes in bulk. That has worked very well for portion control. I mix it up, sometimes I use some salmon rather than white fish, sometime fresh scallops, sometimes canned. It all works.

I buy nori in bulk on Amazon.com and they love it.

What nori you buy if you don't mine sharing? Is any ok to use?