BHM type mix

[deepesh]

Gel type puréed foods have been used as staple food by many aquarists. Basically you purée whatever you think or hope the fish will like, set it into a gel/jelly and then freeze it for future use.

Classically this was the Beef Heart Mix. Obviously this became the goat mix here. And following questions about whether mammalian meat was suitable long term feed for fish the Shrimp Mix came in to the picture.

So has somebody tried this or variations on this theme?

I have been planning a shrimp mix but I thought I would ask around before diverting the shrimp from my plate to my aquarium. Maybe if the fish don't like it I can cook it and have some prawn cakes aka chingdi chop.

[deepesh]

So here it goes...

There were no shrimps, only basa. And basa is our favorite as beginners. OK so basa is pangasius bocourti and what I got was pangasius hypophthalmus aka iridescent shark. So many beginners start off with iridescent sharks and goldfish combinations!

1 pangasius fillet about 8-10 cm along the side
1 chicken liver
1 red bell pepper
1 large clove of garlic
1 500 mg tablet vitamin c
1 tsp gelatin

Prepare the bell pepper: char it on a naked gas flame till turns soft and mushy. The skin will char to a black charcoal and peels off easy once the pepper cools down enough to handle. Discard the stem and the seeds. Reserve the flesh.

Prepare the gelatin: soak in cold or room temperature water till the crystals turn transparent. Then warm in a water bath till it forms a clear viscous solution.

Blend everything except the gelatin. The consistency I went for was very fine and homogenous.

Heat the mixture through for a couple of minutes. I used the microwave.

Mix in the gelatin. Set in the fridge for 2 hours before freezing.

[deepesh]

Notes:

This mix does NOT stink. Pangasius have a very mild flavor and next to no smell. Chicken liver has a metallic iron like smell but the mix overall smells only of garlic and bell pepper. Nothing fishy at all.

Do you have to char the bell pepper? Your call. Charring it helps to remove the skin and softens the flesh. The skin and the raw bell pepper flesh don't homogenize so well and form small tough lumps in the mix. With large fish that's not much of a concern, I had puntius gelius to feed.

Do I need to go through all this hassle with the gelatin? Yes if you want a lump free gel. Otherwise you can dump it in warm water and mix but you will have some adamant gelatin granules that refuse to dissolve and clump into lumps. Gelatin comes from animal bones but of you are making this mix then it should not be of much concern to you. If you want to avoid gelatins all is not lost. Agar aka china grass is also a good gelling agent derived from seaweed and is totally indigestible. Great roughage. All I could find however was vanilla flavored so I did not try that. You can get lab grade agar from lab supplies stores.

Why heat the mix? many proteins are water soluble and will cloud the water. Heating through for a few minutes coagulates them so that clouding becomes less. Another thing is that heating destroys some of the vitamin c but anyway this mix still has a megadose of vitamin c as long as you don't heat the mix more than a couple of minutes. A human being probably needs only 50 - 100 mg a day. This has 500 mg. Some of this will be lost on exposure to air/oxygen.

Would I change this mix? Yes, I would add some essential fatty acids the next time. May be spirulina, maybe not.

Edited to add: the fish love the mix. The gouramis are dumb and keep searching the water surface for the delightful smell but the mix sinks. But everybody else gets a bellyful. It even has my irrorata loaches out in the daytime.

[deepesh]

With raw fish thiaminase is a concern and thiamine deficiency is a very serious disease that often remains undetected for very long periods.

However I couldnot find any information on pangasius containing thiaminase. Cyprinid fishes like rohu and catla etc are rich in thiaminase and this is destroyed by cooking but that toughens the flesh for small fishes.

As usual German aquarist forums have been at the forefront of the thiaminase debate (don't they always have a lead on the important issues?). Perhaps if juanico would help me on what they are saying about thiaminase in pangasius catfish...

Edited: thanks to juanico's immediate response I now believe pangasius to be free of thiaminase although the information is not from aquarists forums.