Hi guys, welcome back to the Jack Wattley Discus hatchery. I’m Gabe Posada, in this is the tutorial I will show you how you can make high quality discus food with our beef heart recipe.

The Ingredients and Prep

In this article we are finally going to be making the beef heart formula. For this recipe, we’re going to be using;

• A Whole cow heart Two and a half pounds in weight with all the fat on it (weight is variable but the bigger the better).
• Two Pounds Of Fresh Salmon
• 10 Ounces of Spinach
• Eight Cloves of Garlic
• Six Ounces of Krill Meal
• Six Multivitamins

Before you begin anything else, set the multi vitamins aside in a small bowl or glass of water to soften them up for later use.

Preparing The Beef Heart

You will notice that there is a lot of fat on the beef heart, and unfortunately all of this is just waste byproduct. The fish will not eat it and It’ll only spoil your water. For this first step we will have to become butchers and knock all the fat off. Realize also that this will inevitably create quite a mess, so be prepared for that.

Once you get done cutting off all the fat from the beef heart, don’t be surprised if you end up throwing away about half the heart. The heart we used for the companion video to this article originally weighed two and a half pounds, we end up with one pound and three ounces after we cut out all the fat. If this feels like a waste, just remember the fish won’t eat it and it will create grime in the tank water. Once you have a nice lean section of heart cut, we are going to now start grinding all the wet ingredients together.

Grinding The Wet Ingredients

When I say wet ingredients, I mean the beef heart itself and some fresh salmon. Everything is raw, and there’s no cooking involved in this recipe. There is no such thing as a chef in the Amazon River where these fish naturally feed, after all. Next, we’re going to grind all this together in a meat grinder. Put the spinach, the garlic, and the beef in the grinder until all these ingredients are combined into one mixture.

Puree and Add Krill

Next, we take that mixture, and we’re going to put it in a food processor that we will now add our dry krill to. Adding the dry krill will bind the whole mixture together and make it less wet. If you try doing this in a blender you may end up burning the blender. I recommend a very powerful food processor in order to puree everything properly.

As you add the wet mixture to the food processor you will also add the multi vitamins that we had set in water earlier to soften up. Now, we’re going to puree everything. You must let this mix because what it’s doing is creating a paste and mixing everything altogether. Once you see that rotating motion, that’s when you want to start adding your dry krill so that the mixture will start to bind everything together.

Ideal Consistancy and Storage of Mixture

The idea is to make the consistency hard, and the way that you do it is by adding more and more krill as it mixes in the food processor. You will soon start to see the consistency of the mixture turn more solid and the food processor will begin to work just a little bit harder. The consistency that we want is one that is nice and hard and not very sticky. It’s pretty much ready to rock at this point and the last step is to bag the mixture in freezer bags for storage. My suggestion is to put the mixture in small or large Ziploc bags but make it thin so you can break off pieces when you go to feed the fish. By storing it as a thin piece, you will not have to let it thaw out in the future when you want to feed your fish.

Important Notes

A couple important notes about this recipe is that it should always remain frozen until you decide to feed the fish. It will go bad within just a couple of days if it is left in the refrigerator and not the freezer, but my storing it as a thin patty you will be able to just break off enough for the day without removing the whole mixture from the freezer. Also, a good idea if you want to keep your tank and water clean is to break off just enough of the mixture for one day and let it thaw on a napkin or paper towel before you feed the fish. This will help reduce grime and build up of extra water, blood and gunk on and in your tank.

 

Hopefully this article helps and inspires you to try this new recipe for your discus fish and if you ever have any questions, please send them to us. We’ll be happy to reply.

Also, make sure to check us out on Instagram and watch all our new videos.

Once again, thank you for coming and joining us at the Jack Wattley Discus hatchery.