Who prepares their own food...Worth it?

[Reilly Stv]

I have come across threads in the past of people preparing their own foods and freezing them, I can't find a thread now. Does anyone out there do this? Do you have a recipe? and procedure to freeze it? I have the following: Yellow and Kole tang, Picaso Trigger and a Flame hawk. All seem interested in meats, flakes, and Algae sheets (except the hawk, he doest touch the sheets) I trie to mix it up, but perhaps if I could prepare a more balanced meal, each time, their nutrition would be optimal.

[Dubbin1]

Just mix it all up, put it in ziploc bags, lay flat and freeze it.

[J. Montgomery]

I made something similar to the coral food recipe described in Eric Borneman's "Aquarium Corals" book . . . its basically sea food (shrimp, scallops, etc...), some frozen fish food, some nori algae sheets, vitamins (which I didn't have), dry fish food, etc . . . stick it in a food processor, put it into Ziploc bags and freeze. Its got quite a smell to it . . . I haven't been feeding it to my fish yet (they're in QT), but it makes my hermit crabs go absolutely ape sh*t when I put it in my main tank with the corals.

[Fountainhead]

Check out this video link:

http://reefcast.com/downloads6.php

Video #5 is a DIY Fish Food demo. I think it's Melev and Quicksilver. I've done it, and it's a little messy and smelly (I did it in the garage) but not particularly difficult. My fish love it.

[dc]

I did for awhile, but it seemed like more trouble than it's worth. You can get real small ice cube tray in the car/motor home section of Walmart. They are the same size as the cubes you buy

[Shagsbeard]

My homemade stuff is about $3/lb when I'm finished with it. Store bought stuff that my fish wont even look at is well over $30/lb. Worth it? Think so!

[Paintbug]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8512573#post8512573 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Shagsbeard
My homemade stuff is about $3/lb when I'm finished with it. Store bought stuff that my fish wont even look at is well over $30/lb. Worth it? Think so!

not to mention your fish get a better mix.

Reilly Stv i dont really recommend using flake foods for mixing your own. they usually disolve before the water in the mix gets frozen, and they can/will cause phosphates, and nitrates. Melev has a good recipe on his site as well. www.melevsreef.com

[dc]

Of course availability of some of the stuff to make it is a factor. :D

[Shagsbeard]

Yeah... using flake food to make your own food kind of defeats most of the purpose of making your own food. The processing of sea food into flakes is really really not needed. It's handy. It's easy to feed flake food to a fish, if he'll eat it. But it's not as good as a full diet of plenty of real food.

My next project is to get free 'pods from the ocean. I'm a bit hesitant, because I'm sure I'll be getting more than just the pods... but how bad could that be? (Why do I get the feeling that someone's laughing at that?)