So last night after I logged off on here I decided to do as JChillin mentioned (even though I didn't see any of these posts at the time), and low and behold, it works FINE!
Yes it breaks apart a little quicker then I would like to see, but it becomes a feeding frenzy once a chunk gets bit (as it releases a small cloud of food). Fortunately my food processor was a piece of junk and I couldn't get the pieces quite as small as I would have liked, but that seems to keep it bound a bit better. But here's the best part:
It SINKS!
My biggest concern was that this would just float at the surface (where most of my fish don't go due to the tiger barbs), but it turns out my recipe (which I can never duplicate again
because I was cutting it in 1/2 and doing a lot of, "well that looks like about 1/4lb", makes the food slightly less buoyant than the water. This mean it sinks very slowly in the tank so everyone can get a good look as it falls.
I had read that sometimes it takes a couple feedings before they take a liking to it, but that was not a problem with my fish. Within about 30seconds of dropping it in the tank there was a lot of activity. The food had landed on a leaf above where most stay so they could smell it but not see it. It was pretty funny to watch them hunting for something they couldn't find. Finally one of the fish found it, and the frenzy was on.
Because it sinks I'm not worried about the slight mess it makes because my cory and MTS will cleanup overnight.
So basically for about $7-10 I have about a pound of high quality frozen food that I plan to feed once a day. The other feeding will still be using a combination of my Hikari FD products. I think the flake food is going to be retired (which stinks because I just bought a new bag from Big Al's that I haven't opened yet).
I'm just waiting to see if I get some vibrant colors on my fish. The tigers have always looked great, but my dwarf gourami (possibly due to stress) never has gotten the rich coloration I'm hoping (its possible he's also not fully grown).
Sorry for the long post, but I'm just so happy this worked out, even if I screwed up the recipe!
