For a number of years I have been feeding fish in my reef tank prepared food from a coral and fish food manufacturer. It is high quality stuff and certainly very easy to feed. Crack off a piece of the frozen food, mix it with some tank water and disperse it in the tank. The one problem is the cost can add up over time.
My solution was to make my own DIY homemade fish food. I picked up an inexpensive food processor and went shopping for some seafood at a local supermarket, where I found some cheap scallops, raw shrimp and mussels. I then walked over to a Petco next door and bought some cubed mysis shrimp, blood worms, krill and silversides.
Other ingredients ordered over the internet included the following:
- Vita Chem (the whole bottle)
- Spirulina Powder (1 tbsp)
- Kent Garlic Extreme (1/2 bottle)
- Reef Roids (1 tbsp)
- Several sheets of Nori
- RO/DI water (1 cup)
My Method For Making DIY Homemade Fish Food
Before I started I laid the frozen seafood out for one hour on the counter to defrost it a bit. You don’t want to let it sit for hours since it could spoil and become too mushy for the food processor. A fish food puree would not be good. It is also important to break up any large chunks to make it easier to be diced up.
I started by slicing up the nori and then moved on to the seafood. I did have to peel the shrimp and remove the scallop meat from the shells, which was a pain in the ass to say the least. Once I was done I put everything in a big bowl and added in the other ingredients, mixing everything together with my hands, yuck.
The final step was to put the food in quart-sized Ziplock bags and place them in the freezer. I flattened the food in the bags and made sure there was no air inside. I ended up with seven bags, enough to last me many months and save a nice chunk of money.
Additional Resources
If you would like some help with a new tank build, including help designing a custom aquarium, or help re-configuring your current setup then you can visit this page for more information. And if you are looking to add some equipment, I do sell GHL, Pax Bellum, Reef Octopus Calcium and Kalk Reactors and Royal Exclusiv products, including Dreamboxes, which is the equipment I use and recommend. I also sell Reef Brite metal halide and LED fixtures as well as Maxspect & IceCap Gyres.
As for additional insights and information, please explore my many other reef tank and SPS related articles as well as my YouTube channel. For an even deeper dive into reef tank care you can check out my Reef Keeping Master Class. This online course is an immersive and one of a kind educational tool designed to help reef aquarium hobbyists build and maintain a beautiful SPS reef tank. The course is a series of video presentations with some supplemental video from my YouTube channel. There are also quizzes to help students retain and understand the information presented in the course.
Need some frags…..I can help with that as well 🙂 Please visit my SPS Frag store to see what is available.
