Beef heart. Who feeds it?

Hi all
All you guys that have discus, do you feed beef heart? If so, where do you get it, how do you feed it and how much do you feed.

Thanks

 

Hi Dash

I feed beefeart

At first I made it myself,what a mission!
Cleaning the heart from al the fat takes long,and it is not easy to find beef heart that you know had no hormone treatments ext as it makes your male discus sterile!

Then an easy way was to order from Prof Dirk who imported it from germany,but due to too much paper work and permits he stopped importing the beefheart!

Young discus grow up nice and fat on it.

With a bare bottom tank I fed it twice a day,but sucking out left overs every other day as it fouls water very quickly!

I would not feed it in a planted tank where I can not siphon out all the left overs!

 

Can I buy this pre made and frozen? If so, where?

 

Im sure you can feed chicken livers? Anyone?

 

Interesting. Will be nice to here what others think? I have never hird of this. Beef heart is used because it is very high in protein

 

I use to feed my discus on beef heart. Use to make up my own blend which consisted of beef heart, mixed vegetables and spirulina. It worked our cheaper to make my own food which the fish really loved and grew pretty nicely compared to buying commercially available foods.

 

@Shakes can you share step by step how you made yours?

 

Buy from Northlands Pets.

 

So wich is better. Home made or frozen from the shop. Is there a company that manufactures this or do the lfs make and frees them selves.

 

I use to make my own mix, blhad my own mincer and had a Jack Whatley recepy.... Trim it of all fat to start, I minced it twicw for fry, once for aduldts. The mix was 2 haerts trimmed, 3 leaves spinach choped finely, packet of shrimps and prawns devained and de shelled, 1 cap of a multivitamin tablet gel poked and squeezed out witt spirulina caps mixed with gelatine.

Frozen and shaved, vavuumed packed in thin packs. Your retailer like spar can do all this for u their butchery.

 

Hi Dash,

I feed my discus beef heart, blood worms and super brime shrimp and discus tetra bits. Tetra bits in the morning and alternate between the beef heart, blood worms and shrimp in the evening.

Get my beef heart iether at Jungle Aquatics or pet store in leaping frog center in fourways

 

Dirk's one used to come from a company, but Northlands makes it themselves.
I've never tried making it myself, sounds like a lot of work.

I know Dirk preferred importing them because he was worried about hormones being used in SA beef which could make your male Discus sterile.
Now that he's not importing it there's not much option if you do want to feed it.

 

Thanks guys.


Yes northlands does have it. Tried it out today. Discus go mad for it. The problem that I see is that some of the pieces are to large for those small mouths and had to be removed. This is why I asked if a company manufactured it as the size of the stuff when defrosted is important.

Could I defrost the stuf put it in to a blender and frees again?

 

Hi. I make my own. Got the recipe somewhere on the internet and amended it. I get beef hearts from the local abattoir. As I am partly in the meat industry I make sure that I get ones from cattle which were not fed any hormones(free range). It is quite a work to prepare the hearts. From 6 kg you get about 2.5 to 3 kg after all the veins, fat etc were cut away. This I put through a mincer. Mince 1.5 kg shrimps. Cook (just until soft, about 10 minutes or so) and mince about 1 kg of fresh garden peas. Mix all together. To this I add 6 X 500mg Vit C tablets (powered), 6 X Multivit tabs (Centrum also powered), the contents of 5 omega 3 and 6 capsules (its an oil and smells like fish and its difficult to get the smell of your hands), 3 tablespoons spirulina power, 5 raw egg yolks, 1 finely chopped garlic glove (do not add to much or the fish won't eat the mix). I mix everything again and put this mix once more through the mincer. Wife will not be impressed when you make this, believe me. Then I add gelatin and agar agar and mix it through. Put it in thin layers in baking pans on wax paper. Put it 10 minutes in the oven on just warm. This is to sterilize it and not to bake it. Let it cool. Cut into pieces, put in plastic bags and freeze it. I feed this to my discus and other fish. This works for me and my discus have grown very nice on it. Please, I am not claiming to be an expert, on the contrary more of a novice, or that this is the alpha and omega. Maybe it is not even the right quantities of all. I am however not prepared to pay about R600 per kg for imported food. Besides this mix my fish also get tetra discus, flakes and blood worms. Going to try earthworms also in the future. On another thread someone said that chicken liver is worse than beef heart with hormones. Don't know if it is true. Fluit fluit my storie is uit.

 

Thank you very much. Will try this some day soon.

 

Sorry Dash but I had to after reading the heading.....I tried to feed beef heart but the damn thing just wouldn't eat anything I gave it.:nuts:

 

@dash. A beef heart had lots of fat around it so I use to cut off as much as possible. My recipe isn't cut and dry and I was given it by another discus breeder who just gave me his ingredients and plus minus what ratio's he use to mix them. I use to take the heart and cut it up into four different sections for blending. I then use to take the 1kg bag of mix vegetables and do the same with it. Added the portions to a blender until it became a paste. I then took a spirulina tablet, cashed it, dissolved it in a glass of water then added it to the mix. I then used zippy bags and rolled the mix into sausages and then froze it. The reason I rolled the mix into sausages is because it was easier to grate into portions for the fish to eat. I hope this helps.

 

"Beef Heart. Fishes are unable to utilize fat from warm-blooded animals for energy use. As a result, these fats build up in the liver, and over time will result in degeneration of their liver. For this reason, meat from any warm-blooded animal, and especially beef heart, is bad for your fishes. "

Beefheat is indeed used a lot for Discus food. It is nutritious contains quit some proteins and is cheap. When people make their own blend with discus heart they cut out the valves, veins, all the fat leaving clean muscle. It is used for over 5 decades as THE food for discus. Only beefheart would be a poor diet and discus also needs vitamins and vegetable matter. Most beefheart blends contain blanched spinnage, garlic, paprika powder, freeze dried bloodworms and flakes/grind pellets or even banana. I fed beefheart for two years now without health issues on my domesticated discus. Recently I bought a group of F1 curipera (fry from wild fish) and I discovered they had more difficulties to properly digest the beefheart so I switched to a fish based blend. It contains about the same ingredients as the hear blend but heart is replaced with salt water fish like cod and some shrimp in addition. The fish love!

Up until now I bought my fish mix until I discovered the manufacturer used a fresh water fish (pangasius) in his recipe. Since the fish a raw I don't want to take risks with transmitting parasites like tape worms. Marine fish have different type of parasites that won't thrive in fresh water species so it is best to use marine fish. I'm still experimenting with the right mix.

Young fish need to be fed heavily to get them to grow properly. Imo young fish need a beefheart blend or a fish based blend to grow. Feeding adults is easier and don't require larger amounts of fish/beefheart blend.

In nature discus feed on algae, shrimp, small fish, insects, insect larvae and even fruits are found in the stomach content of wild fish.

Ref:http://www.cichlid-forum.com

 

Thank you for a well thaught out response.