Our Second Try At Home-made Discus Food

On Friday we  made our second attempt at home-made discus food. Sarah mixed the following ingredients in a Cuisinart food processor that we bought for the purpose:

• 1/4 pound of medium shrimp (about 8-10)
• A handful of Ocean Nutrition Prime Reef flake for color.
• 7 cloves of garlic

We plan on adding some green leafy vegetables to the mix in the future, but we wanted to start out with a simple ingredient list.

We added the garlic last, which was a mistake. The processor wasn’t able to break it into small enough pieces with the other ingredients already mixed in. Next time, we’ll make sure to process the garlic by itself.

We split the mix in two and added half of a very ripe banana to one part for binding. We’re not sure how well the mix will hold together in the water and wanted to experiment with different binders. We then placed each of the two batches into sandwich bags and froze them overnight.

We didn’t feed the fish on the night when we made the food. The next morning, we broke off a small piece of the batch without banana and dropped it into the tank. The good news is that the mix seemed to stay together. Unfortunately, the fish weren’t willing to actually eat any of it. The red cherry shrimp in our tank seemed to like it, but the discus turned up their snouts. We vacuumed the food out as part of our weekly water change.

I’ve read that it can take up to two weeks to introduce discus to new foods, so we’re trying to be patient. We’re also considering adding a few frozen bloodworms on top of the food to try and trick the fish into tasting it.