DIY Food

Turbo's Aquatics

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Our club (Greater Iowa Reef Society) gets together twice a year and makes a batch of DIY Food. I've been organizing the event for the past 2 years or so and wanted to go ahead and post our recipe.

It is also maintained as a Resource on the Greater Iowa Reef Society Forum.

We've pretty much got this down to a science as far as the process goes, every time we refine it a bit (and get better at it). We just did one yesterday and we made 84 pounds in 2.5 hours from start to finish (that's walking in the door, to walking out the door).

Our sources:
  • Brine Shrimp Direct
  • Local Grocery store and/or Asian Market
  • Seafood Distributor - in our case, Great Midwest Seafood, a family owned seafood distributor in Eastern Iowa - who will deliver right to your door!
  • Drs. Foster & Smith
  • Premium Aquatics (or BRS, Champion Lighting, Marine Depot, etc)

Tools & Supplies needed:
  • Food processor, one that holds about 15 cups - the bigger the better, and not a cheesy cheap one. For a big batch, get 2, you will use them, or at least have a backup in case you smoke one
  • Do NOT use a blender - they just don't work well, and you will smoke it. We have.
  • 20g Keg Tub, or several 5g buckets (the latter being OK for smaller batches, but multiple buckets means equally splitting ingredients, which is a pain)
  • 1 Gallon freezer ziplock bags, heavy duty
  • 2 Gallon freezer ziplock bags (for thawing)
  • Heavy-duty corded Drill with 1/2" chuck (NOT a hammer drill, but that level of quality)
  • Drywall paddle mixer with 1/2" hex shaft (from Lowe's)
  • Several 1 gallon buckets
  • Large net (for straining)
  • Colander (plastic is fine)
  • Rags in a Box (Lowes)
  • Microfiber cloths
  • 18oz Solo Cups
  • Digital portion scale (we have 2)
  • 1 cup plastic measuring cups (2)
  • Rubber Spatulas
  • Rubber gloves (nitrile, no powder)
  • Extension cords & power strips, if needed
  • Cutting boards
  • Very, very sharp knives (kitchen knives, filet knives, etc)

First, the ingredients list:


This list represents quantities for a large batch: about 70 lbs once it's all done (so 70 16oz bags).

Seafood:


I had been getting most of this at the local grocery store and Asian market, but this time I found a seafood company that supplies restaurants and businesses and swung a deal on great product.

Shrimp: 20 lb peeled, de-veined, no tail, frozen block - Philippine White, which is block frozen with zero preservatives - this is hard to find, almost everything has sodium triphosphate or metabisulphate or some other preservative you don't want. Shrimp tastes bland without this, which is why it's hard to find. If you can't find this, see the RODI soaking section below

Cod: 15 lb, flash frozen, no preservatives (relatively easy to find)

Scallops: 5 lb DRY bay scallops. Dry = no preservatives (relatively easy to find). 60-80 ct or smaller is fine

Squid: about 4 lb (from Asain Market, GMWSF doesn't carry this)

Baby Octopus: 4 lb

Frozen Krill: 6.6lb (3kg) we got this previously at the Asian Market in 14oz frozen packs, but this time we got a solid block from Brine Shrimp Direct (ask Victoria)

Brine Shrimp Direct:
  • Daphnia: Two (2) 1kg blocks
  • Mysis Cubes: Three (3) boxes
  • Bloodworms Cubes: One (1) box
  • Brine Shrimp Cubes: One (1) box
  • Enriched (Spirulina) Brine Shrimp Cubes: One (1) box
  • Krill Cubes: One (1) box
  • Rotifer Cubes: One (1) box
  • New Wave Arctic Copepods: One (1) 32oz Jar (no-thaw type)
  • New Wave Kaeplin Roe: One (1) 32oz Jar (no-thaw type)
  • Krill (listed in seafood above) is a solid 3kg block and is awesome.
* each box of cubes is 7x 100g trays of cubes

Drs. Foster & Smith:

  • Two (2) 40 oz frozen packs PE Mysis Shrimp ($25 flat overnight shipping!)
Premium Aquatics:
  • Aqua-Tech S.E.L.C.O. Boost 111mL
  • Aqua-Tech AZOX 8oz
  • Boyd Vita-Chem 16oz
  • Kent Zoe Marine 8oz
  • Kent Coral Vite 16oz (they were out of this, so we didn't include in latest batch)
  • Kent Garlic Extreme 4oz
  • New Life Spectrum 3mm Pellets 300g
  • Polyp Labs Reef Roids 4oz
  • Seachem Reef Plus 500mL
  • Seachem Vitality 50mL
  • Seachem Phytoplankton 500mL
  • Two Little Fishies (TLF) Green Seaweed 200g (100 sheets)
  • TLF Purple Seaweed 200g (100 sheets)
  • TLF Goniopower 30g
  • TLF ZoPlan 30g
  • TLF PhytoPlan 30g
  • TLF Marine Snow 16oz
* not all of these are needed, you can certainly trim some of these out to reduce cost, especially on smaller batches.

Second, the preparation
:

Seafood prep:

Shrimp: thaw, usually fully, because it comes in a solid block. If loose in a bag, partially thawing is fine

Cod: partially thaw and cut into cubes, a little smaller than 1"

Scallops: partially thaw and cut in half, if they are large. 100ct and smaller, no need to chop up.

Squid & Baby Octopus: thaw only until you can break them apart, then slice into pieces as small as you can reasonably get them, because they don't chop up well in a food processor. Cut while partially frozen because it's WAY easier than when they are fully thawed.

Krill: thaw and drain (actually, we didn't drain, but it depends on the quality)

RODI Soak: if any of the seafood contains preservatives, place these in a bucket and fill it with RODI and let soak for 20 minutes. Drain and soak again. Repeat this so that there are at least 3 20 minute soaks. Stir the concoction every few minutes. Strain using a colander and set aside for blending

Seafood Blending:

Fill the food processor with a mix of all seafood ingredients. How full you fill it will depend on your food processor. Run at full speed for about 5 seconds at a time. Open up the processor, use the spatula to turn over the mixture (large pieces will go to the outside) and repeat a few times until it "turns over" in the processor and is sort of like a paste. Dump in keg tub or bucket. Repeat until all seafood is blended.

You can vary the consistency of the mix, leave some a little chunkier, etc. This last time we didn't blend in the krill (by accident) but the stirring step I think beat them up well so it was OK...we'll see when we start using it!

Alternatively you can blend just some of the krill and leave the rest whole.

Thawing Frozen Items:

While the Seafood prep is going on, the rest of the frozen stuff needs to be thawed. Here's what we do.

All items are placed in ziplock bags in a sink full of warm to hot water. The water gets cold fast, so you will need to drain and refill several times to get everything thawed. As things are getting more thawed, don't use too hot of water, not looking to cook the stuff, just thaw it.

You will need to knead the bags every so often, probably as often as you change the water. Before doing this, make sure all the air is out of the bag, or else you will pop the bag and there goes $$ down the drain. Feel for solid chunks and squeeze them to break them up. Don't leave any partially frozen chunks, everything needs to be fully thawed.

The Krill used in the seafood steps will usually need to be thawed in this step.

Cubes: these need to be popped out of the trays WHILE STILL FROZEN. Do NOT thaw, at all, or this becomes impossible. We line the 1g buckets with 2g ziplock bags and have a cube tray popping party. Remember, there are 8 boxes with 7 trays each, that's 56 trays with 30 cubes each, which is almost 1700 cubes. Yeah. the foil sometimes comes off, so you have to watch for that and remove it. The edges of the cube trays are a bit sharp so while the rubber gloves help, it doesn't always prevent the occasional cut. Using tight-fitting rubber-coated gardening gloves can help (also keeps your hands warm). Once all popped, place the bag in the thawing sink.

Daphnia: This is very important. Do not thaw the Daphnia in the bags they come in. We made this mistake once, and ended up with a sink full of daphina. The issue is that the stuff is frozen in the bags, which can cause them to crack. Cut the bag off the frozen block and place the block in a 2g bag and place in the thawing sink. It helps to actually cut the bag, then put it in the 2g bag, then peel the bag off (because the block will break in pieces). Use one 2g bag per block.

Kaeplin Roe and Arctic Copepods: Place these in the freezer until the mixing stage. These do not freeze and are meant to be kept in the freezer. These are fantastic products by the way. And no they did not pay me to say that*

*They also don't threaten to sue if you name their products as an ingredient if you haven't paid them $10,000 to get the rights to use their product by name, unlike another well-known arctic copepod type of product whose name I refuse to mention for that specific reason (and that is why I don't use them anymore). And I'm not kidding, that other company literally threatened to sue our CLUB if we posted that we used their product as an ingredient, even though I saw that as free advertising. Where did that soapbox come from???

PE Mysis: Same as Daphnia, usually you can thaw in the bag it comes in (it's a tough bag) but for ease, we cut it off. You can put 2 packs in one 2g ziplock bag, it thaws rather easily.

Rinsing: Do not strain or rinse any of these items. The only exceptions might be the PE Mysis (which we have done in the past, but not this time) and the frozen Krill (not the cubes, the big block). The krill are whole and about 1" long, and sometimes have really pokey feelers and antennae and stuff so watch yourself on these suckers. You can strain these in a colander and pour some RODI over them or soak them if you don't trust the source, but the BSD stuff is tp notch, we didn't ever drain it.

Third, the Mixing:

After you are done thawing everything and blending all the seafood in the food processor, this is the fun part.

Your keg tub or bucket should now have all the blended seafood (and krill). Dump all of the thawed items in, and use a spatula to squeegee out the bags (or invert them and have someone else scrape).

Hook up your paddle on to your heavy duty drill and start mixing the concoction. This takes a little practice. You will get seafood on you. Be prepared. A few fine points - don't run it very fast, and do NOT abruplty stop or else the swirling mixture will collapse and "pop"...all over you. Think of dropping a rock in a lake. Except that lake is raw seafood.

While you are mixing, pour in all of the liquid bottled ingredients. Save the SELCO, AZOX, and Garlic Extreme for last as these are by far the smelliest.

Pour in all of the powdered ingredients. **IMPORTANT** two of the TLF jars have a dessicent pack in them, and the other has a spoon. Open these, remove the dessicant packs/spoons, and THEN sprinkle these while mixing. We didn't realize the dessicant pack was in these one time and had to go fishing. Bare handed. But at least the smell wears off in about 12 hours (it does not wash off, even with bleach)

Do not pour in the NLS pellets until all of the other ingredients are mixed in, right before you start bagging.

Fourth, the Bagging:

While the other parts of the process are going on, anyone standing around texting or bragging about their tank needs to multi-task and start pre-bagging.

Take the 1 gallon ziplock bags and place 1 sheet of each Green and Purple seaweed into the bags, and set them aside. Do not crumble up the sheets, just leave them flat. We used to break up the nori and mix it into the concoction, but what that does is almost instantly suck all the moisture out of the mix and it becomes too much for the drill, resulting in smoked drill, and "alternate mixing technique" which again does not wash off but goes away in 12 hours or so.

How many bags you fill with nori depends on what your total batch weight will be. I enter everything into a spreadsheet and convert the weights to pounds, then subtract about 5% or so for drainage loss from thawing frozen blocks, and divide by 16 to get the quantity of 1 lb bags. I calculated 86 bags from yesterday's batch, we actually ended up with 82.

Now comes the really fun part.

We set up an assembly line of 2 tables with the keg tub/bucket in the middle. Each assembly line consists of a scooper, 2 baggers, and a few cleanup & seal people.

Weighing: we have in the past tried to weigh every bag to get it consistent but once you figure out the system, the scales are no longer needed. Basically the process is fill the Solo cups and dump in the bags. Some food always sticks in the Solo cup, so first you fill a cup and then dump it out a few times. Then zero the scale with the dirty cup. Now fill the cup until it reads 16oz. This is usually about 1/8" or so from the top (there is a "lip" on the cup that serves as a great measuring line). Once you are able to get this filled & dumped on a consistent basis, you're good to go for the assembly line.

Scoopers: kneel by the tub/bucket and use the 1 cup measuring cup to fill up Solo cups with food and set on the table.

Baggers: One person opens the bag, the other person dumps the food in. Pass it down the line

Cleanup & seal: Get a 1g bucket with some hot water, and use damp/wet rags & microfiber cloths to wipe out the zipper seal on the bag, and wipe off the outside of the bag, which will inevitably get some of the mixture on it. Flatten out the bag and "burp" most of the air out, and seal it. Double-check the seal. You can stack the bags.

At this point, it's just cleanup and divide up the goods and go home.

Final Step:


There is one final step that needs to be done before freezing the bags. Remember the nori? Right now, that's flat in the bag, and on one side, there are likely air pockets. With one batch, we left these as is and it was OK, the idea was to get an equal amount of nori in every "serving". The next batch, I got home and "massaged" the bag until the nori had broken up...and that worked out very well! This is better explained in a video, which I made earlier this spring after that event:



And then yesterday, I had to make another one to show how to break up the nori this time. The lesson learned here is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. This time we crumbled up the nori, but that backfired because wet crumpled up nori turns into chunks of nearly solid seaweed that don't break up well.



Freezing:

What I do is clear out a shelf in my freezer and then cut up a USPS large flat rate box (the cube shaped one) into squares that are about the same size as that flattened bags. Place one piece of cardboard on the shelf, then 2 bags (flatten the food out as best you can) and then a piece of cardboard on top of it, and repeat until you have 6 or 8 bags stacked up. Then go to another shelf. Freezing usually takes a good 24 hours to get really solid. After that, you can remove all the cardboard. I leave the one on the bottom, and place pieces on all the vertical sides. This protects the food from the defrost process so that you won't get freezerburn.

Helpful Hint: get like 4 boxes of Arm & Hammer and put 2 in the freezer and 2 in the fridge. Unless you enjoy the waft of fishy-garlicy smell permeating your refrigerator and freezer. It permeates through the bag, until it is frozen.

When ready to use, here's what I do. I take a cutting board and a very large kitchen, then slice the bag, and peel it off and throw it away. Then I press the knife down on the food block and cut it into strips about 1" wide, then cut the strips up, attempting to get the cubes all the same total size. This can be a bit tricky, because the bags won't freeze completely even.

Feeding:

Hold in tank with fingers and watch fish go friggin bonkers. They love this stuff.

I hope y'all found this informative. This has been a great event for our club, we usually have enough demand every 6 months for 60-80 bags (pounds). That's just in one region, this past spring we did a double-batch split between 2 regions and made 160 lbs.
 
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Turbo's Aquatics

Turbo's Aquatics

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PS I didn't plan it...but I just happened to be wearing my MACNA 2013 R2R shirt in both videos, which were 8 months apart!
 

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Awesome thread! I've been doing something similar (on a much smaller scale though) for a while and have found a few good tips in your post!
I always leave my nori dry though. I just cut it into strips and leave them in a clip lock bag till it's feeding time and add it to the tank dry. Is there any particular reason you decided to add it to the mix?
 
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Turbo's Aquatics

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I can't think of a reason why not to add Nori to the mix. Dry Nori placed directly in the tank will disintegrate after a while, or float around in chunks. So putting it in the food and breaking it into chunks means that it's easier for the fish to consume, and they get a little bit with each feeding.

Also, the Nori adsorbs the moisture out of the mix after it's placed in the bag. In our mix, a lot of this moisture comes from additives, so I suppose the Nori helps facilitate this getting to the fish a bit. That's just a guess but it seems to make sense.

Many food mixes have Nori in them. LRS Reef Frenzy is one. I've had a discussion or two with Larry and he thought our mix was way too potent and that it might "overload" filtration. So take that into account as well. Fish go absolutely nuts over LRS Reef Frenzy, they seems to love this DIY mix as well but there are some things that you just can't do DIY that foods like LRS can, things like access to ultra-fresh seafood, probiotic mixes, oyster eggs & ovarian tissue, etc.

It's used in our club by a lot of people who keep grow-out frag tanks and packed reef tanks, with great results. A little goes a long way. One can use a DIY food by itself, and many in our club use this food exclusively, but I know of at least a few users who mix this together with LRS and other prepared store-purchased foods before feeding. Adding this type of DIY mix can really stretch out your dollar but IMO there is still a lot of value to commercially prepared foods.

This mix is really meant for broadcast feeding a medium to heavy reef tank, not necessarily meant for a FOWLR or FO tank, or a tank with very few corals. One can modify this formula for a FOWLR tank rather easily by removing all of the coral-only type of items such as:

Daphnia: Two (2) 1kg blocks
Rotifer Cubes: One (1) box
Kent Coral Vite 16oz (they were out of this, so we didn't include in latest batch)
Polyp Labs Reef Roids 4oz
Seachem Reef Plus 500mL
Seachem Vitality 50mL
Two Little Fishies (TLF) Green Seaweed 200g (100 sheets)
TLF Purple Seaweed 200g (100 sheets)

One can further modify it for an Large/Aggressive tank by using the food processor for only a few seconds, and possibly by taking out a few other things like the Roe or Copepods, maybe thinning out the other ingredients from BSD as well.
 

EndlessReef

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Any tips on how to cut this recipe down for just 1 or 2 households not enough storage space for 82 bags the Mrs would kill me lol
 
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Turbo's Aquatics

Turbo's Aquatics

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You can mix & match individual trays from BSD. You can get less seafood, but you'll pay more per pound usually. As for the additives, you can get some of these in smaller quantities, but many not. You would just have to measure out smaller amounts and shelve the rest for the next batch, or just leave them out.
 

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When i have made my own food in the past i would use ziplocks and found that the food would suffer from freezer burn, ended up having to double or triple ziplock bag the food because i was pulling it out and breaking off a pice every day wearing down the bag. So i found that keeping those old pre-measured frozen food cube packages and replacing the foil on top makes it a little easier to measure and save on wear. But will be much better with this food recipe inside :)
 
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See my note on this. I have been able to (very successfully) prevent freezerburn simply by surrounding the flat packs in an insulating material. In my case, I use cardboard. After the bags are frozen, I leave one under the stack, and then place one on either side vertically to prevent direct contact with the interior of the freezer.

A better way still would be to place the bags of unused food in a cooler in the freezer to protect them from the heating cycle. If there's no room for a cooler, breaking up some styrofoam into pieces that will fit and taping them together works. DIY freezerburn cooler.

I've seem people buy small ice cube trays (they make them) and put the food mix in those to make their own cubes but I think it's just as easy to flat freeze the whole pack and then chop it up while it's still frozen
 

Rausch

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Wonderful! i will definitely try the styrofoam method, that sounds like it would work perfeclty! i did try the ice cube trays and found that the food would just stick in there and the only way to get them out is to thaw them for a little while or run under hot water which puts you right back into the freezer burn situation where the food keeps thawing and freezing. Thats why i started using the old food cube plastic trays, they just pop right out. But i agree i love the simplicity of Ziploc's and if i can keep freezer burn down then thats a way better option! plus saves Money!
 
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Turbo's Aquatics

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Yeah dre that's the one that I've seen people use before. Freeze then pop them all out into a ziplock bag.

Rausch I think your issue with the ice cube trays is that you were trying to store them in there and only use a couple at a time. For those types of trays you need to pop them all out and store per my response to Dre. But the old cube trays work too if you want to keep in the tray. They just tend to wear out after a few uses.
 

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great write up! That's quite a process and a nice list of ingredients!
 

Rausch

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Floyd thats a great tip! ya those old plastic one wear out very quickly! so i will just freeze the food in the trays and pop them out into the ziploc! then use your styrofoam method for storage!! thanks for the great write up!! puttin this to work tonight!
 
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