Home prepared foods.

[Microman]

Does anybody advocate the use of home prepared foods for Apistos and other SA dwarfs and if so what recipes are well suited to dwarfs and in particular Apistos....
Any recipes would be helpful..
I have tried a few different recipes and despite using copious amounts of gelatin for binding the foods still make the tank water very cloudy when eaten. The foods however have been eaten with some gusto.
Doing something wrong or is this cloudyness the norm....
Any advice would be appreciated.
Mark...

 

[fishgeek]

prehaps you coud try agar rather than geatin to set the food

gelatin itself though idn't cloudy is it? if not then it something else in the diet that is clouding the water

andrew

 

[retro_gk]

I feed a gelatin bound home-made recipe as a staple diet and don't have any issues with cloudy water, unless I mash the food up to feed small fry and this gets eaten up in minutes, so the coudiness does not persist.

As fishgeek said, it probably is one of the ingredients in your mix, or the way you prepare it that is causing the problem.

 

[Microman]

Yes i agree, i did not mean to imply that it was the gelatin that was causing the cloudyness in fact it is there to bind and stop it becoming cloudy when fed.
Im sure it is the ingredients i am using that is causing this cloudyness so can anybody suggest a suitable recipe for dwarfs.
Thanks,
Mark...

 

[fishgeek]

mark are you using any powder in the mix
fish meal?shrimp meat? as protein
any added oils

i guess just put a bit of each ingredient in water seperately and see which is causing the cloudiness

i think i have some recipes somewhere i can try to find though i think that most are going to be very similar and repeated in many places

andrew

 

[nightowl1350]

if there are ground up veggies in your mix it will cloud your water. I've used beefheart on my apistos (left from my angels) and do a w/c 1/2 hr or so after I feed it. They do go for it, but it can make a big mess.

 

[Microman]

Been using a recipe based around Pork Liver,Prawns,Crab,Tuna,Brine shrimp flake,High protein granules, Spinach, Fish oils and Gelatin...
Powdered garlic and also powdered Astaxanthin for colour.

Have a feeling the cloudyness could be due to Pork liver that is blended to a paste...
Mark...

 

[fishgeek]

i would of thought that pork liver might als be poor nutritionally because of a skewed fatty acid balance

i dont think fish are very good at digesting cholesterol and sturated fatty acids , i thought(and i may be wrong here) that poork liver had a high level of both the omega's 3 and 8's that are good and also other saurated fatty acids that are not wanted

the other thing with liver is the high vit a content , not sure whether this is ok for fish, certainly scott,wilson and bowers didn't do too well on it!

also mark were you looking for a steelblue female, i think i have a decent sized one now!

 

[Microman]

Thanks Andrew,
Will PM you....

 

[apistoireland]

I use the same mix for my apistos as for my discus and they are loving it:

500g of cooked mussles
250g of raw prawns
150g of nettles (cooked, put them in a pot and cover until they are soft and look like cooked spinach, by the way you can use spinach too. But spinach might have been sprayed with)
2 cloves of garlic
5ml of baby's vitamine supplement
1 egg yolk
You can use either use gelatine or agar to bind.

First put the nettles and garlic into a food blender and mix blend them to a fine paste. Next in are the raw prawns and then the mussles. Don't blend them too finely or you will get cloudy water.
Put the mixture into a mixing bowl add the egg yolk and the vitamines.
I use the gelantine you can buy in Tescos. Dissolve in 150ml of water and let it cool down a bit then add to mixtures.

I feed the mix straight from the freezer and never had any problems with either my apistos or discus

 

[Microman]

Thanks mate,
Ive been regularly using spinach but i must admit i had never thought of nettles,excellent idea and free too....
Mark...

 

[retro_gk]

My recipe is about 1 lb of shrimp, 1/2 lb of frozen mixed veggies, a teaspoonful of cyclopeeze, 4 cod liver oil capsules and the juice from about 4 garlic cloves. Sometimes I add a half teaspoon of spirulina powder to the mix.

Blend, mix with 2 packets of gelatine dissolved in water (add some oatmeal if runny) refrigerate, cut, bag, freeze.