Discus – Seafood Recipe
While many people feed their Discus a diet of warm mammal proteins such as beef heart and liver, it’s far from a good choice of protein, and one our resident Discus expert, Nick, also avoids. Having grown out thousands of healthy and very big Discus, we’ve asked Nick to put together his seafood recipe for us to share.
Table of Contents
Ingredients
Preparation
Notes
Ingredients
This recipe has been broken down to an approximate 1KG total product mass.
Multiply it as you see fit.
Clams – 150g – You can use any fresh, readily available clam, or similar shellfish
such as mussels. My favourite is mentioned below.
Salmon – 170g – Remove all skin and bones.
Prawns – 180g – Remove head, all shell and legs, and if cold enough and done
properly, the poop line should pull straight out.
Squid – 200g – Remove skin, pen, head, arms and tentacles, and innards.
Krill Meal – Approx. 250g – You may need more or less during the blending period
to ensure a proper consistency. Have more on hand.
Probiotic Mix – 10g
Algae Blend – 10g
Garlic – 6 average sized cloves (1 tsp per clove).
Vitamins – 6 daily use multivitamins.
Clams
Most clams will do, as will mussels. Given the region that I have my hatchey in, Paratapes undulatus as seen here, is the most appropriate species of choice, with a good meat to weight ratio and high availability.
Salmon
Raw, fresh Salmon from a high quality source is an important and exceptional ingredient, used for its high fat content, and exceptional protein, vitamin and mineral content.
Prawn
Prawns or Shrimp, that’s up to you. Both are very similar, however, is important to use raw, fresh product, preferably purchased live. I prefer prawns due to their cost and availability.
Squid
It is important to peel the skin, remove the insides, pen, head and tentacles. All contain parts that are either unusable or very difficult to blend and indeed, consume for the fish.
Krill Meal
Include a high quality Krill Meal mix, preferably one that a high Astaxanthin content. This is used not only as an incredible ingredient, but also as a binder. Avoid cheap product with fillers.
Probiotics
Lactobacillus Plantarum, Bacillus Licheniformis, Bacillus Megaterium, Bacillus Subtilis, Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, Nitrosomonas SPP, Nitrobacter SPP for priobiotics, yeast and beneficial bacteria.
Algae Blend
A 50-50 mix of Spirulina and Chlorella powders. Ideal sources will contain high fat content over carbohydrate content. Avoid powders bred to produce high carbohydrate content.
Garlic
Use good quality, organic garlic from a trusted source, or even better, home grown. Garlic is added for intestinal benefits, parasitic mitigation, and immunity. Not for taste.
Vitamins
Standard daily use multivitamins round out the complex vitamin and mineral requirements of not only Discus, but all aquatic life. Be sure to avoid specialist vitamins with unnecessary additives.
Preparation
IMPORTANT: In order to more easily prepare and blend the proteins, make sure to bring them to a chill in the fridge for several hours before preparation and before blending. In addition, the weights above refer to each ingredients prepared weight (clam meat without shells, prawn meat without shells etc.)
You should use a food processor with a boomerang shaped blade as normal blenders or low powered devices will likely struggle and burn out or overheat, requiring you to wait for the motor unit to cool down.
Drying wet ingredients
Be sure to drain as much moisture as possible from the protein products, using a colander and paper towels where appropriate. The less moisture, the better.
Blending wet ingredients
Ensuring you have chilled down your protein ingredients in the fridge, it’s time to blend these, along with the garlic and vitamins. Depending on the size of your processor, and blades, you may need to add slowly to the processor. Keep blending until you achieve a consistency similar to the picture shown here.
Add the dry ingredients
Begin with the algae and probiotics and blend these thoroughly. The second image below illustrates the thorough mix.
Add the Krill Meal
Slowly add 50g portions of Krill Meal to the blend and continue until you hear the processor beginning to struggle and can observe the mixture moving around the bowl as more of a solid form instead of a sloppy paste. Once you reach the correct consistency, the mixture should not feel sticky, or stick to your fingers. Remember, it will continue to absorb moisture for the next 15 to 20 minutes so don’t overdo it, or you may have difficulty in packaging for storage.
Bag and Freeze
Simply add your mix to ziplock bags, and use a rolling pin or similar to flatten them out. Filling and squeezing from the bottom up ensures the least amount of air remains in the bag, preventing freezer burn and increasing the longevity of the product. Roll these as thin as you can/wish as it is easier to break off and feed, and indeed, defrosts faster when added to the tank. Complete this step as quickly as you can to ensure not only freshness, but to minimise the exposure to the air and the product drying to a point where it is difficult to handle. Place the bags in the freezer and once frozen, you’re good to go.
Other important notes
Fillers such as Wheat Gluten make suitable additions or substitutes to your Krill Meal to bind the mixture. While more Krill Meal is preferable, Wheat Gluten is still acceptable. Avoid other common fillers such as gums and alginates as these are useless and do nothing for the fish except to bind them up and cause intestinal problems.
No medications that you intend to add to fish feeding times should be added to this mixture as the medication will likely be useless by the time it comes to feed. Metronidazole for example, is only active for 8 hours once exposed to liquid so don’t waste your time and money adding it to frozen food.
Feeding this food:
This product can be stuck to the aquarium glass, inside a shell, on a feeding plate or straight into the water column. Some fish that have been spoilt, or brought up poorly with a very narrow diet may not take to the food immediately and may ignore it for several days before beginning to vigorously eating this mixture. It’s a good reminder of why you need to vary your fishes diets and not feed only one or two foods only, especially when they are young. This food will foul your water faster than cheap flake or dry, processed fish foods, therefore be mindful of reducing or halting filtration whilst feeding, and ensure to remove uneaten food. Leaving this mixture in the system for an extended period of time is a bad idea. I always turn off the filters (not the air or sponge filters) while feeding this to ensure that none of it makes it in into the sumps and mechanical media such as pads and sponges.
This should last for at least 6 months in the freezer.