Hey guys, Jeremy here with KISS Aquatic Systems k-i-s-s keep it simple stupid.
In today's video, I'm going to show you how I made this DIY homemade fish food
for my hillstream loaches. Which as you can see here they seem to be enjoying.
Overall, making your own fish food can be quite a bit of fun.
And in general it's pretty easy to make something that's both a lot cheaper and much higher quality
than really almost any sort of prepared dry foods that you can get in the store.
It's not a bad idea to give it a shot from time to time. You can make it in large quantities
and then put it in the freezer and feed it to your fish as a treat.
As you can see here, they will thank you for it.
So before I jump into all the details and the step-by-step process of how I made this food,
I'll take a few moments to share my thoughts and my experiences on the hillstream loach diet,
which I found can be a bit misunderstood. A lot of people view hillstream loaches
quite simply as algae eaters. And while it's true that certainly they do eat a lot of algae,
I believe these little guys do need some other things as well. So I would probably describe
them better as biofilm grazers and opportunistic omnivores rather than just pure algae eaters.
So obviously the most visible part of biofilm is algae, but in addition to the algaes these fish
do consume a lot of the tiny little critters and creepy crawlies that typically live in and
among algae as well. Things like copepods, other tiny aquatic crustaceans and worms,
stuff like that. Really anything that they can fit into their tiny little mouths.
From my experiences in my tank, I think my hillstream loaches do a much better job
eating almost every single copepod off the
front glass of my aquarium than actually getting every last bit of algae in the tank.
So when I was deciding what I was going to put in the food mix for these guys,
I was sure to add a bit of meat into the recipe.
Also, my hillstream loaches enjoy grazing off of the blue green algae that grows in my tank.
Now blue green algae isn't actually algae at all, it is a form of cyanobacteria.
Now cyanobacteria does get a bit of a bad rap because some species of it can be quite toxic
and foul smelling. But that's clearly not the case with the species I have growing
in my tank, and in fact the non-toxic forms of cyanobacteria can in fact be very nutritious.
So when I was putting together my food mix, I was sure to add a generous amount of
spirulina. Spirulina is a form of cyanobacteria that grows in brackish and saltwater environments
that is commonly used around the world as a food supplement. And it's extremely nutritious,
and I was sure to add quite a lot of it to my food recipe for my loaches.
So based on my personal experiences watching my hillstream loaches eat over the years,
I decided to prepare a food mix that was mostly vegetables but includes other goodies as well.
So things like shrimp, spirulina, and garlic, and I use gelatin to hold everything together.
And the ratio of the main types of ingredients I used are a quarter ounce gelatin
to one cup of water to two cups of ingredients.
The first thing I added to my mix was fresh spinach.
Spinach is a very nutritious vegetable, and I actually feed my hillstream loaches
fresh spinach pretty much every single week so I know that they like it.
After the spinach I added some frozen peas, which I happen to have had in my freezer.
And I also added some frozen zucchini to the mix. Feel free to play around with different
kinds of vegetables. I used these mostly because I happen to have them on hand,
but I'm sure really almost any kind of vegetable would work well.
After adding my main vegetarian ingredients, I added four cloves of garlic.
I'm not quite sure why, but fish in general seem to really go crazy for garlic,
they really like the flavor. And garlic is also believed to have a lot of
health benefits and immune system benefits for fish as well. So probably almost any commercial
food you can find will have garlic added, and I put a pretty generous amount in here.
Next I added two shrimp to the mix. These were just raw frozen shrimp,
and when it defrosted a bit I took off the tails. But that's really all I did with it.
After adding all my main ingredients,
which comes out to about two cups when I flattened it out, I put it in the blender and mixed it well.
While I was mixing, I added a bit of water
to improve the consistency and I also added my spirulina powder.
I added two to three ounces of spirulina, so I put quite a bit in here.
Spirulina is actually a great source of protein. So the powder that I used
is 60 percent protein by mass, and not only does it have a lot of protein
it also has a very good and balanced profile of protein. So it has
pretty much all the different amino acids that you could look for in a protein source.
Also has a lot of other good minerals and nutrients and fats for your fish.
People actually use spirulina as a color food for koi and other fish with reds and oranges,
because it has a lot of carotenoids in it and other pigments that really bring out some of
those colors. That's obviously not really a factor here for my brown and yellow hillstream loaches,
but overall very nutritious food and it makes my mix a nice blue color. Which is kind of cool.
So after my food was well mixed in the blender I prepared the gelatin,
which as I said earlier its purpose is to hold the food together. You could use really
any generic gelatin that you can find as long as it's unflavored and has no additives in it.
What I did was I used a quarter ounce of gelatin
and as per the instructions on the box I mixed it well in boiling water.
After it was fully mixed, I combined my gelatin mixture with my food mixture,
and then I spent a few minutes mixing those two together by hand.
Once I got the consistency that I wanted,
I then poured my mixture into two containers and then let them sit in the refrigerator to firm up.
After a few hours, I took my containers of food out of the refrigerator and used a knife
to cut it into squares.
After this, I put the food back in the refrigerator for about a day just to fully firm
up. And then I took it out of the containers and put it in plastic bags in my freezer,
where I expect it to last probably at least a year.
Now two more things I'll note about my food preparation process.
Firstly, the water that I used to make this food
was not tap water. Tap water contains chlorine and chloramines that are toxic for fish.
I used bottled spring water,
but I probably could have used dechlorinated tap water as well as that's what I use for
my water changes and I know it's safe for my fish.
Second point is, as you could probably tell, I did not actually cook any of the
ingredients in my food. Heat can denature some proteins and enzymes and vitamins.
And given that I am freezing this food and it's staying in the freezer until it's being used,
I thought it would be better not to cook anything at all and just use the fresh
room temperature ingredients so that all of my nutrients would be in good shape when
I added them to my tanks. Yeah folks, that's really all I did here to make this fish food.
Once it's thawed out, it sinks to the bottom very quickly.
Which is great because my hillstream loaches are bottom feeders and they would not be able
to eat this food if it was floating around the tank or in the water column.
It took them about a day to realize that it was food, but once they did they seemed to
really really like it. Actually a lot of them look like they prefer this homemade food to
prepared algae wafers. So overall, very pleased with the initial reception of this food here.
And also very happy because I know that this food that I made doesn't have any preservatives or
junk or fillers and is full of fresh veggies and fresh proteins that I know these fish can really
benefit from. So thanks folks, that's all on DIY fish food for now. Hope you enjoyed the video.