Discus doing great!!

[pikwik]

Today is day 3 and my Discus is now eating whenever I feed. He is also hangin out with the Rams and swimming around with them. He has shown a couple of good speed bursts across the tank as well. I didn't know that Discus could swim so fast. Tonight he was almost eating right out of my finger tips. He also comes over and stares at me when I go near the tank. These seem to be good signs so far, lets just hope it stays this way. He seems like a very curious fish, just like my Rams. :o

[NatakuTseng]

Congrats, just keep a real good eye on him, it doesn't take much to cause problems with them.

If you have a food processor or grinder, I can give you a food recipie for him, if not, try some 90% lean beef hamburger and see if he eats it.

[pikwik]

Congrats, just keep a real good eye on him, it doesn't take much to cause problems with them.

If you have a food processor or grinder, I can give you a food recipie for him, if not, try some 90% lean beef hamburger and see if he eats it.

Could you please pm me your recipe! That would be great. If I was to feed him beef would it have to be cooked?

[NatakuTseng]

no you want it Raw. Just be sure to remove anything that goes uneaten.

1lb raw shrimp ground fine
1800mg Multivitamin no iron crushed into a powder
1800mg Calcium +D crushed into a powder
2-3 hardboiled egg yolks into a paste

Mix all of this together, a 1lb mix will fit into a 1gallon ziplock bag, at a 1/4" flat. Freeze it and either break peices off to feed or cut it up into 1/4-1/2" squares and store it back in the freezer.

[OrionGirl]

I would never encourage anyone but a professional breeder to feed beef to any tropical fish. The fats are completely different than those encountered by aquatic animals, and can cause serious problems in terms of digesting. Mammal fats solidify in tropical waters, and the fish can't deal with it, in addition to problems for water quality this will cause in most setups.

There is a difference between professional breeder maintenance and those of hobbyists. Advice for one does not cross over very well.

[NatakuTseng]

Well tell that to the 1000s of hobbyists that feed beef burger or beefheart (with the burger being a substitute for the BH when not available, or better yet using the shrimp mix I gave, ground lean turkey burger can also be used) to their discus OG. Its probably the most reccomended diet for the fish. Outside of this forum, you won't find anyone bashing feeding it to discus, only encouraging. Just be sure you clean up the uneaten food and you'll be fine.

High protein and meaty foods are extremely important for discus, which is why the beef, turkey, shrimp, haddock, etc is very commonly used.

So, I'll continue advocating using it. Its a good diet, and not as messy as most people think, I've fed it, its good, doesn't foul the water quickly, but I do prefer the shrimp for a higher protein level, as well as other properties the shrimp has.

[OrionGirl]

Your choice, but people also need to understand the hazards. There are lots of things that are pushed, here and elsewhere, that are not always best practice, and certainly not universally applicable.

[sumthin fishy]

:joke: Make sure to feed one inch of ground beef per gallon. :joke:

Sorry that was a bad joke. I can agree with OG on 2 points. One if you can feed them something more like thier natural diet(shrimp as NT suguests) why feed them something else that might not be good for them. Two, an experiencced breeder/fishkeeper will be able to better spot the problems which may arrise out of feeding unnatural(to the fish) foods. I'm sure OG and NT know more about what those would be than I do, not sure how experienced pikwik is, but I would sure hate to see "discus were doing great, but now are swimming upsidedown" posted next week.

[NatakuTseng]

Beef is a universal discus food around the world. Whether it be beefheart or very lean ground burger, nearly everyone from Hobbyists to Breeders use it, because its a safe, effective, and quality food for the fish.

Every commercially available food marketed to discus is beef, Jack Wattley has a food out even that's main ingredient is beefheart. Not many people feed shrimp because its a good deal more expensive than beef, I do because I get better growth rates out of it, and also acts as a natural color enhancer.

It all comes down to that its just as safe to use as anything else from Frozen brineshrimp to a flakefood. If you let anything sit in the tank of course it will rot and cause problems. The raw beef and raw shrimp takes a while to start rotting, I have let both sit in tanks for well over 6-7hrs as the discus like to pick at it, and no signs of even begining to degrade with either, the water has also tested perfectly fine with doing so.

Flake, pellet, and other manufactured foods are not the best diets period. A homemade food enriched with vitamins, calcium, and the amino acids and such found in the egg yolks is a super healthy staple diet, any fish can benefit from a targeted homemade food.

[OrionGirl]

Ground beef and beefheart are very different products--even the leanest ground beef readily available is higher in fat than beefheart.

[PumaWard]

But still fed by experienced discus keepers who can't get their hands on beefheart.

[mooman]

Transcribed from Ad Koning's "Enjoying Cichlids"

"Fishes are cold blooded animals. they use fat both as an energy resource and as an energy reserve. Therefore they have fat deposits in several parts of thier body. Because fish are cold blooded, which means that their body temp varies with that of the surrounding water, they spcialize in faty acids with a low melting point. This prevents the fatty deposits from being rigid at low temperatures. Warm blooded animals store fatty acids which have a higher melting point. Because fishes cannot assimilate fat from warm blooded animals as well as they can from cold blooded animals, it is stored in the tissues, especially the liver. It has been shown in salmon that individuals fed with products from warm blooded animals show a tremendous increase in liver degereration compared to those fed with fish. Beef heart and any other meat from warm blooded animals is therefore extremely bad for your fishes."

I don't want to say millions of discus keeper are wrong, but....... maybe the use of beef products is a bit antiquated. It was probably originally used because shrimp was expensive and hard to come by. Now and days why not try to match your fishes captive diet more closely with it's natural fare. Incidentally, NK's recipe is very similar to the one recommended by Koning in this same book, except that he uses geletin as a binder instead of egg yolk, and adds some veggies and spirulina powder as well. I would go with NK's shrimp recipe over beefheart if I was feeding discus....which I'm not, so take my opinion for what it's worth. :D

[NatakuTseng]

Moo, its hardly antiquated. Discus breeders would not be ending up with some of the incredible fish they do if the beef was bad for the fish. The largest problem with beef, is making sure its hormone free as the hormones can effect the fish in the same ways as color enhancing hormones such as Methtestosterone do, by destroying internal organ, and or causing infertility. Beef is one of those tried and true foods for discus, I use it as a back up, but most large breeders aren't willing to get shrimp at $7/lb when they get beefheart for $1/lb or burger for $2/lb. The beef works, and is a healthy food for them (in all honesty there has probably been more research done on feeding discus for growth and health than any other fish out there, many of the Asian breeders have college education dealing specifically aimed at the production of tropical fish and understanding their needs, massive in house studies about feeding has been done with the big breeders over there) so until there is a conclusive amount of scientific proof provided that beef is infact harmful to the fish, I will keep advocating using it.

The binding agent in the shrimp mix I use, isn't the egg yolk. The shrimp itself acts as an incredible binder, holding the vitamins, calcium and the egg yolk itself. Its probably one of the cleanest foods available. Egg yolk is extremely water soluable, and has the potential to foul water very quickly, but its also an excellent source of nutrients for fish, using the shrimp, the egg yolk is held to the shrimp, and won't have a negative impact on the water quality unless sitting in the tank for quite some time. Both of the food mixes, beef and shrimp, won't cloud the water one bit, both are extremely clean.

Moo I would also reccomend trying the shrimp mix with the apistos, any carnivorous fish can really benefit from that food. Is an excellent fry food, and just as good as a staple diet.

[mooman]

I wonder if the mammalian fatty acids (mentioned my Koning as being detrimental) are not a problem with discus because of the higher temperature at which they are kept? Certainly the salmon in the study cited were maintained at much lower temperatures.

I've have been thinking about blending up some shrimp mix for the apistos, just haven't gotten around to it. Probably going to wiat untill I use up all the frozen food i have stored away.

Also, to be fair, Koning also recommends that blood worms not be fed to ANY fish as they are sometimes collected from poluted waters. He may be a tad on the overcatious side.