Mike: you asked so ...
Basic Recipe
Ingredients
1) ¼ pound of beef heart
2) ¼ pound of canned spinach
3) ¼ pound of canned English peas
4) ¼ pound of canned carrots
5) Other condiments as set forth below.
Mixture Preparation
1) Trim the beef heart of all fat and cut the remainder into approximate 2”x2” cubes.
2) Open the spinach’, pea’s and carrot’s cans and drain the liquid into a blender.
3) Add the beef heart cubes to the blender and turn the blender onto the slowest speed.
4) When the beef heart is minced (not liquefied) remove the beef heart and liquid from the blender.
5) Put the spinach, peas, carrots, garlic and multivitamins into the blender and liquefy.
6) Put the beef heart into the blender, turn the blender onto the slowest speed and mix the beef heart with the remainder of the recipe in the blender (just enough to mix; the beef should still be minced into the size which your smallest fish can eat).
7) You can begin feeding your fish with the mixture but place the mixture in a refrigerator, stir the mixture a minimum of twice per day.
8a) After two days place the mixture in a “pizza pan” to a depth of app. ½”, freeze, break into daily size chunks, place the chunks in baggies and place the baggies in the freezer* or
8b) place a sufficient quantity of the mixture in small plastic tubs (approximately the size of the small cream cheese tub) in order to provide 1.5 weeks of feeding and place the tubs in the freezer**.
* At each feeding remove an appropriate size portion of the beef heart from the baggie, place in a cup and the cup in the microwave in order to thaw the beef heart prior to feeding.
** Remove the tub from the freezer, allow to thaw in the refrigerator and feed.
Additional Items One:
I use beef heart instead of chicken heart because IMHO it is critical to remove all!!! fat. This is not possible with chicken hearts due to the time involved.
I also do not want my fishies to "get tired" of eating the same thing.
I use carrots, spinach, peas, lima beens, etc. (virtually all veggies except for corn, asparagus and dark beans) for the veggie part.
I use beef heart, cod and shrimp for the "meaty part".
ie.
one batch will be beef heart, carrots and spinach;
next batch will be cod, spinach and peas;
next batch will be shrimp, peas, carrots and lima beans
etc.
I do fix a batch with chicken livers but only every couple of months as I am concerned about the residual "bad items" in livers.
My fishies love it also.
Controlling the particulate size of liver is much harder than the other "meaties".
When I blend it too much it is very messy!!! to feed.
Addition Items Two:
which are several other items from my experience which vary from the literature.
I use 10 Multipurpose Centrum Vitamins instead of 3 per each pound of "meaties".
This must be OK as other than stupidity and 2 cases of ich I have not had anything (that I have observed) wrong with my fishies.
I use 3 packets of yeast instead of 1 packet per pound of "meaties".
I do not use gelatin as is set forth in the literature. My fishies seem to enjoy not having the gelatin in their "groceries" although the mixtures are slightly messier to feed.
The literature says this is a "no no" but I let mixtures "set" for 2 or 3 days before freezing in order that the "meaties" can soak up the yeast, garlic and vitamins.
(I let my last batch set for 5 days and then drained the fluid hoping to increase the consistency of the final feeding mixture and I mixed some of the fluid with flakes and my fishies went crazy - especially the cories.)
Lastly but definitely not "leastly" in one word - Garlic!!!
I use 10 cloves instead of 3.
My fishies love!!! it.
I made a small batch one time without garlic "to see what would happen" (obviously not post doctoral research in physics but still useful).
Virtually no "feeding frenzy" (I could almost hear my big black angel when he was looking at me saying "the boy messed up and forgot the garlic").
Additional Item Three
These mixtures are apparently very, very "rich stuff (as would be applied to humans)" .
This is good in that Gold Nuggets will grow from 1.5" to 6" in a year.
This is bad in that even slight overfeeding will cause the generation of observable concentrations of ammonia and nitrites (even in my aquarium which has "maybe fives times" a typical quantity of biological filtration media.)
I currently use method 8b and a tablespoon in order to quantitatively measure the quantity of the recipe which I am feeding.
TR
