Expensive to Feed Fish

[FINWIN]

Red Wings are my go-to brand as well; the durability makes them by far the least expensive option. The comfort is a free bonus, but it's priceless when you are on your feet all day. They almost make you feel as though...I dunno...you get what you pay for? My personal favourite model is apparently no longer available in Canada, so I recently treated myself to a new pair while in N.Dakota; now retired, I no longer need to worry about the mandatory CSA green patch for work footwear

Now, here's a recommendation for bargain fish food that I have not tried myself: dried (or maybe freeze-dried, not sure which...) crickets, apparently available in bulk from feed stores and intended for chickens. Not really a "recommendation", actually, more of a request for info. Has anybody tried these for carnivore fish?

*raises hand*

Yup. I get the mealworms for chickens (they can come in jumbo size) and "insect medley" in a 5lb bag. The medley has crickets, grasshoppers, soldier fly larvae, and smaller mealworms. I mix it all together with some vitamin powder. Brick goes nuts when he sees the bin of bugs. I figure this should last until around Christmas. I also keep oxygen packets in the bin to preserve freshness and smell. I crush the insects as a treat for the other fish and they gobble the crumbs. I found the perfect food for the oscar. As soon as they hit the water he's slopping and crunching. Attacks them like a bass on a lure.

 

[tlindsey]

Attacks them like a bass on a lure.

 

[Trouser Cough]

I will definitely look into the insect options (and have been feeding a hillbilly mix of cichlid pellets, Bug Bite turtle sticks, shrimp, tilapia and Hikari's jumbo carnisticks). Large carnivores in my mind likely need a diet of raw fish and bridging that step in the normal way has been a spendy proposition.






And Gentlemen, I have it on good authority that our Lord wore Pronghorns. A guy from Danner told me that.

 

[jjohnwm]

Lol, Danners start to fall apart if exposed to hard use, inclement weather, harsh language...pretty much anything encountered once they are removed from the box.

FINWIN , the medley sounds interesting if they go light on the mealworms. I haven't fed mealworms to anything outside of birds in my backyard feeders for many years. They seem to be little more than sticks of fat extruded into chitinous tubes. Great for providing calories to insectivorous avians overwintering in cold weather, not so much for actual nutrition. I'm definitely going to try the mix, both in my tanks and in my birdfeeders.

One more thing that makes me a fan of DIY gel food is the fact that it can be cut into any size of portion for any fish, with no size limits. Many of the foods we use and discuss are only "large" when compared to the tiny flakes and granules used for tetras, barbs, rasboras, etc. While bigger than those dainty offerings, things like Massivore pellets, Carnisticks, adult crickets, krill and many others are still pretty tiny when compared to the fish to which we feed them. They're okay for merely big fish...but for true monsters, such as many folks keep, these mid-size foods are hardly worth the trouble. A nice slab of gel, packed with whatever combination of goodies you think appropriate for your fish, can be cut into any size pieces. I have only one smallish monster, my Jelly Cat, who at a current size of 18-19 inches is happy with an inch-thick slab of gel cut into 2x5 inch slices. One of those makes a meal; two are an obscene feast. This food disappears instantly, with no crumbs, no missed pieces, no waste, no inedible juices. In contrast, when I was still feeding him mostly on Massivore pellets, I would need to grab a handful and drop them into his waiting maw. He would, if we were both lucky, catch them all when they hit the water...but usually a few would be missed, forcing him to scour the bottom looking for food items almost too small for him to bother hunting down.

Big fish already produce enough waste products by their metabolism, without even more originating from uneaten food particles.

 

[latapy10]

Interesting responses. Where I live there's been a recently introduced European slug that appears not to eat vegetation and there's no shortage of them. I wonder if I can feed those revolting creatures to my fish(?)

Small European slugs up to 2-3 cm can be fed to medium-sized fish. I would not put large slugs in the aquarium. Water purity is more important.
I used to occasionally feed the sturgeon with small slugs.

 

[FINWIN]

Lol, Danners start to fall apart if exposed to hard use, inclement weather, harsh language...pretty much anything encountered once they are removed from the box.

FINWIN , the medley sounds interesting if they go light on the mealworms. I haven't fed mealworms to anything outside of birds in my backyard feeders for many years. They seem to be little more than sticks of fat extruded into chitinous tubes. Great for providing calories to insectivorous avians overwintering in cold weather, not so much for actual nutrition. I'm definitely going to try the mix, both in my tanks and in my birdfeeders.

One more thing that makes me a fan of DIY gel food is the fact that it can be cut into any size of portion for any fish, with no size limits. Many of the foods we use and discuss are only "large" when compared to the tiny flakes and granules used for tetras, barbs, rasboras, etc. While bigger than those dainty offerings, things like Massivore pellets, Carnisticks, adult crickets, krill and many others are still pretty tiny when compared to the fish to which we feed them. They're okay for merely big fish...but for true monsters, such as many folks keep, these mid-size foods are hardly worth the trouble. A nice slab of gel, packed with whatever combination of goodies you think appropriate for your fish, can be cut into any size pieces. I have only one smallish monster, my Jelly Cat, who at a current size of 18-19 inches is happy with an inch-thick slab of gel cut into 2x5 inch slices. One of those makes a meal; two are an obscene feast. This food disappears instantly, with no crumbs, no missed pieces, no waste, no inedible juices. In contrast, when I was still feeding him mostly on Massivore pellets, I would need to grab a handful and drop them into his waiting maw. He would, if we were both lucky, catch them all when they hit the water...but usually a few would be missed, forcing him to scour the bottom looking for food items almost too small for him to bother hunting down.

Big fish already produce enough waste products by their metabolism, without even more originating from uneaten food particles.

Interesting you mention waste. Brick stopped eating pellets altogether at 1 1/2. He used to have mud piles of poop and logs. Since eating insects his poop is rarely seen and quickly caught by the filters. Only time I see a log is when he's dropping one.

The good thing about the mix is I can add insects and change the ratio. Tried grubs (the gold colored ones) and dried earthworms but he didn't care for those. Sir Gourmet will eat whole grasshoppers but not crickets. The crickets I have to break in half???? Since I paid for the food if this is what it takes to get him to eat 'em, then I'll break them.

He sees the mix and just gulps it all down anyway. I posted the other day he nearly grabbed the feeding spoon and pulled the bugs out. Crazy O.

 

[jjohnwm]

Interesting you mention waste. Brick stopped eating pellets altogether at 1 1/2. He used to have mud piles of poop and logs. Since eating insects his poop is rarely seen and quickly caught by the filters. Only time I see a log is when he's dropping one.

The good thing about the mix is I can add insects and change the ratio. Tried grubs (the gold colored ones) and dried earthworms but he didn't care for those. Sir Gourmet will eat whole grasshoppers but not crickets. The crickets I have to break in half???? Since I paid for the food if this is what it takes to get him to eat 'em, then I'll break them.

He sees the mix and just gulps it all down anyway. I posted the other day he nearly grabbed the feeding spoon and pulled the bugs out. Crazy O.

I guess we shouldn't be surprised when different foods cause a fish or other critter to produce different types of poops. I see that very plainly with my Jelly Cat, Axolotl, Musk Turtle...and my dog...

Personally, I far prefer the biggest, most durable "logs" as they are easily seen and removed, rather than quickly being hidden away in filters to degrade into nitrates. Any critters I have that are fed only once daily or less frequently always receive that feeding early in the day. I make the rounds with a bucket and a large turkey-baster-type gizmo and pick up those monster turds later in the afternoon. That is one nasty-looking bucket by the time I am done...although not as nasty as the dog-poop bucket, which is attended to at least a couple times a day...

The turtle is the easiest. He gets placed into a small bucket with a few inches of water and his food ration. Stays there about an hour; the food is gone in minutes, and the poop (presumably from the previous meal) is almost always produced within that hour. He gets a quick rinse and then back into his tank he goes. The tank stays infinitely cleaner this way; I wish all reptiles were so easy to house-break...or is it "tank-break"?

 

[Trouser Cough]

Lol, Danners start to fall apart if exposed to hard use, inclement weather, harsh language...pretty much anything encountered once they are removed from the box.

Ouch! I'm going to run off and comfort my Pronghorns right now.

So this gelatinous feed you whip up in the kitchen... is that Repashy or is that your own concoction? Mind sharing a little more detail?

Do you make this in bulk and freeze it?

 

[FINWIN]

The medley. There's another brand too but it's $45 bucks a bag. I added river shrimp to this mix. Dusted with flukers repti-powder with beta carotene and other goodies.

 

[jjohnwm]

So this gelatinous feed you whip up in the kitchen... is that Repashy or is that your own concoction? Mind sharing a little more detail?

Do you make this in bulk and freeze it?

No...yes...not at all...yes...yes.

Not Repashy; I've tried that and don't see any benefit over my own secret recipe.

I use a mix of whatever is on hand at the time; fish, crickets, grasshoppers, krill, shrimp, nightcrawlers, mayflies, trout chow, commercial aquarium fish food, etc. makes up the protein side, and the veggie side is mostly duckweed, hair algae, sometimes dandelion greens, Hornwort and/or Guppy Grass (Najas) near the end of the summer when I have a glut of those. I think that FINWIN's insect trail mix (love that name!) would be a perfect component. Proportions vary depending upon what I'm feeding. I use way more meaty stuff for my Jelly Cat, but I've also made versions with more greens for things like Giant Goramy, Pacus, etc. Add VitaChem, powdered vitamins, even human vitamins as desired. I make sure nowadays to add some B1 to counteract the effect of Thiaminase-containing foodstuffs.

Chop the stuff up in a (dedicated) blender a bit; mix it up with some unflavoured gelatin, just barely enough to hold it together. You have to experiment a bit to get the right proportions. Let it set up in the fridge, then cut it into appropriate sized chunks and freeze them on trays so that they don't freeze up together. If you offer a chunk that's too big and requires the animal to shake it or bite it apart...it's a giant mess. You want pieces that are easily and quickly swallowed whole. Once they're frozen, I like to freeze individual feeding portions in separate ziploc baggies. Thaw on a plate, not in water.

This also lets me buy and use big bags or tubs of near-expired fish food, even if its in very small granulations which would be useless to me otherwise, since it just goes into the mix.

Not sure what I should call it; I'm kinda leaning towards John's Organic AquaGumbo. I can use a modified version of the Buckley's Cough Syrup motto (It tastes awful, and it works!). Something along the lines of "It stinks...but they eat it!"