The Puffer Forum

I was browsing through my copy of Axelrod and Schultz's Handbook of Tropical Aquarium Fishes, and found two recipes for fish food.

One was a wet mash("Gordon's formula for Wet Food"), where you blenderize and strain a pound of trimmed beef liver and mix it with 20 tablespoonfuls of precooked/baby cereal to make a peanut-butter-like paste, then put it into jars and heat the jars in water about 30 minutes until the mix coagulates. Then you freeze the jars and thaw as needed.

The other was similar, but it was a dry kibble-type food. The ingredients are listed by weight percentage:
Liver or beef 13%,
precooked cereal, wheat germ, or Zweiback 40%;
shredded shrimp, fish meal, or salmon-egg meal 17 %;
lettuce, spinach, or other greens 13 %.

I have no idea what the other 16 % is supposed to be. Water, maybe?

Boil the meat for 20 minutes in as little water as possible. Take out the meat and boil the other ingredients in the meat-water sauce. Grind or blenderize the meat and add it back into the pot. Boil to evaporate most of the water. Spread onto large flat pan, bake in a low oven (no more than 200 degrees F) until thoroughly dried. Grind in coffee mill, sift, and store by particle size.

Both recipes paraphrased from:

Axelrod, Herbert R., and Schultz, Leonard P. Handbook of Tropical Aquarium Fishes. Neptune City, NJ: T.F.H. Publications, Inc., 1990.

What do you think of these as supplement/staple foods for fish? Probably not puffer food (too much grain?), but maybe for other fish?

I'd be concerned about the liver and beef not being the kind of protein most fish would need. It's too fatty compared to seafood protein. It might be ok for some fish, but not really puffer appropriate, especially considering you can get fresh or frozen krill, prawns, snails, crab, etc etc relatively easily.

Interesting recipes though. I wonder if it might be more enticing to puffers that are picky eaters....

Most of those DIY formulations (definitely including this one) were done many years ago, when fresh seafood and frozen speciaty foods for fish were much less available.

Personally, I would opt for a variety of prepared quality fish foods supplemented with fresh and frozen seafood of fish prep foods.

Beef liver once was popular in DIY foods and was also notorious for fouling tanks. Beef muscle itself is far too fatty for a fish food prep. Such are IMHO an interesting historical note, but hardly suitable for use in tanks today. Those recipes are far older than 1990 I believe.

Fdited to keep Boxermom happy...

Hatty? They were meat a hats?

Thanks everyone! I was just curious what the opinions were on this. I agree, that with all the dozens of choices available at fish stores and seafood counters that it's probably best to stick with prepared or frozen diets and fresh seafood. I was thinking of cooking up the second diet just for fun, since I like to cook fresh treats for my other critters, but since beef is so bad for the fish and the tank I won't bother with it.

I think homemade food is pretty cool... I've made a mixture before.. but it was all seafood. Shrimps, shellfish, seaweed, frozen cubes of this and that, all mashed together. with vitamin supplement.

The fish - and corals - go wild for it, but it really is rocket fuel, in that it adds waaay too many nutrients to the tank. It's fun, if fed sparingly, though.

Why did I stop making it? My wife put stop to me keeping it in the freezer. Fair enough, I did tend to make about 1/2 gallon a time!