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SJO beef heart
Hi George,
I'd be happy to give you the recipe. I would avoid the commercial
beef heart mixes like the plague. If you look at them carefully, you will see
alot of the fat from the heart in them and the heart pieces are cut way too
large. Many fish will not eat the commercially made crap, so alot of people
have been turned off beef heart today. Beef heart is so cheap that it really
pays to make your own. Here's how I have made it for 30 years.
Buy at least two whole hearts, maybe three. Cut away EVERYTHING that
is not red meat -- fat, veins, tissue covering the red meat -- everything
that you can. You will waste a good bit of red meat doing this but that is
OK. You don't want to feed that undigestible stuff to the fish. Use a very
good and very sharp carving knife so you can save as much of the good red
stuff as possible. Take the red meat and chop it into stew meat size chunks.
Put these in a blender or food processor with just a bit of water -- say just
enough to reach the top of the pile of meat in the blender and that pile
should maybe be 4 inches high at a time. Blend. You should have a very very
very thick looking reddish gruel when finished. If it is not thick add a few
more cuts of meat to blend or, if too thick to blend well, add a bit more
water. What you DO NOT want is a watery soup. You want a thick thick
old-fashioned Malt like consistancy. Pour all the blended heart into a LARGE
mixing bowl. Now put the frozen popcorn shrimp in the blender and do the same
thing. I use 1 one pound bag. Again, thick, thick, thick -- just enough water
to allow blending. Pour the blended shrimp in with the blended heart. Now put
1/2 of a regular size bag of green peas in to be blended. Again keep it
thick. When finished, pour these into the rapidly filling LARGE mixing bowl.
Pour in one jar of Gerber's baby food carrots (made with water only) directly
into the bowl. Add a tablespoon of Fleischman's wheat germ. Add 1/2
teaspoon of liquid bird or reptile vitamins. Pour in 6 ounces of a good
quality non-color enhancing flake food (earthworm flakes are GREAT!) and stir
it all into a beautiful, smelly mess.
Put a cup and a half of water in a pot and boil it. Add the 4
individual packages of gelatin that come in a regular size box of Knox
gelatin. Stir and melt. Then pour this liquid into the mixing bowl and stir
well. You are ready to freeze it.
Buy two 40 count boxes of very high quality 1 quart freezer storage
plastic bags. You will pour about 1-2 cups of mix into each of these. Flatten
the mix out inside the bag so that you have about 1/4 inch of flattened mix
in each bag. Have a container that will allow you to stack the bags while
working so that you can keep them flat. You don't want to put too much mix in
each bag because when you go to use it, it will be too hard to break off
small portions. Keep the layer thin in the bag so it will be easy to snap off
a portion for feeding. Freeze all your bags and away you go.
I make up Rosario LaCorte's salmon based food too. Instead of the
beef heart, you use fresh salmon (2 lbs), canned white meat tuna fish packed
in spring water (one regular sized can) and 1 pound of the popcorn or
cocktail frozen, cleaned shrimp. Rosario uses about 1/2 teaspoon of spiralina
powder too but I do not as I don't think the fish really like the taste of
it. You can also use canned salmon but I prefer the fresh as it is not that
expensive anymore. The rest of the process and the ingredients are the same
as with the beef heart mix. I am undecided on the tuna fish. I have made it
both ways and I think the fish like the stuff without tuna fish better, but
that might just be me! For discus, I would just use the salmon and the other
non- meat ingredients as discus have a thing for salmon. Go figure.
On raising the blue gularis, I forgot to mention that I did 75% weekly
water changes in the tanks for conditioning the breeders and on the fry.
Needless to say, I was very gentle in making water changes with the fry. To
this day, my water just has chlorine in it. One drop of chlorine remover and
the chemical is gone! So it has always been easy for me to use water out of
the tap. I would just put the drops in the adults' tank and then fill it up.
With fry, I mixed the drops into a bucket of water and then gently poured it
into the fry box or tank. One day, I know my "easy" water will be taken away,
but it is nice while it lasts.
Robert E.
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