Beef heart

[moose1960]

do you cook it or keep it raw?
Just the meat or some of the fat also?

[mooseman]

Here is my two cents worth..

I use a lot of beef heart with my fish, I have it sliced deli thin at the grocery store, then I spread it out on a cookie sheet raw and freeze it. Then I put it in a baggie and when I am ready for feeding time it breaks off easily into bite size pieces. I do try to remove as much fat as possible and give them meat only.

Moose

[moose1960]

I guess i will be slicing and freezing tonight.
Thanks.

I'll trim fat off and leave some meat attached, fry it in garlic & butter and feed me also...:D

[wetmanNY]

Mammal fat, which congeals to a waxy substance when it's cold, is saturated fat. It's not digestible by cold-blooded critters such as fish. They do need lipids (oils/fats) in their diet, but they must be the unsaturated kinds.

That's why beef heart, with all the fat trimmed away, is okay. But beef flesh, intermarbled with delicious fat as it is, is not okay.

Of course many fish would eat a ham-and-swiss-on-rye if you dropped it in the tank.

[Darkangel]

Most times beefheart is used in a mixture. It would contain such things as vegetables, shrimp, flakes, and a variety of other things like vitamins. It is all pureed down and then bound together with a gelatin. A lot of hard work. mooseman, I really like your idea. Does the butcher give you a hard time with this or do you know him? I am going to give that a try I think. Later.

[moose1960]

If I dropped and swiss rye bread sandwich they would be fighting me for it...:D

Seriously thanks Wetman I didnt know that.
Now what about liver, kidneys etc, even chiken gibblets, will these be ok for fish.

Buying a beef heart at 5 bucks a heart vs small package of frozen BW or other types at 6 bucks a small pkg, too me is more cost efficent. But I do want to make sure they get a variety so I will still feed flakes and dried shrimps and frozen BW etc.

[wetmanNY]

Yeh! don't dip yer hand in there to retrieve it eh...

Note how your whole good list consists of organ meats. Some fat may surround the kidneys etc. No chicken breasts or drumsticks.

Piranhas are often imagined eating a goat or baby egret or a smallish local youngster... but these windfalls aren't their daily fare.

[moose1960]

Now next question.
Is it ok to feed to any Omnivorous fish? Im planning this for monos,scats,columbian sharks, molly and swordtails in my one tank. Platies,cories,and pleco is the other tank.

[Twilight]

Ok I buy frozen beef heart at a local fs. Any difference? or is it the same? If you buy beef heart at a deli {which I have never seen at a deli} you just take it home and freeze it raw? And it is the same as the stuff from a lfs?

[tyler]

i imagine the main difference would be the price. what does beef heart run at the deli?

toss it in the blender, dump it in a ziploc, freeze it up, and you have the same thing that you buy at the lfs.

[moose1960]

I just went to my local supermarket, got half a heart for 5 bucks about the 8 inches diameter and 3 inches thick, should last a long time...unless i eat some lol