# recipe for iodine rich food



## gnatster (Mar 12, 2004)

You might also want to add items rich in Calcium too. Still testing a recipie I found with a control group to see how it goes. And it has oatmeal in it too.


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## pipefish (Jul 15, 2005)

ok i'm not a big health person so your gonna have to help me out, what has a lot of calcium in it? (don't want to add cuddlebone) i know milk does but i dont think it'll look all that nice when i stick it into the tank. Heres what i have so far that i'm gonna stick into the mix and probably use a little from jake's mix to make it hold together-

blanched spinach (have)
blanched zuccinni (have)
dried marine algae
HBH crab cuisine
Hikari algae wafers (have) 
Spirula
peas (have)
garlic (have)
frozen blood worms (have)
hikari crab food

the rest i have to get later when i go out and i'll probably have to try out how much of everything or i might not use everything, still deciding 

hey is that sushi wrap stuff good for shrimp? its seaweed right? can i just take some of those and stick it in too?


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## Salamastre (Jun 19, 2005)

That seaweed is called Nori.

It works great. I posted some links in shrimpnow.com about it, too lazy to look them up, but nori has a lot of minerals, enough calcium and iodine for shrimps, and many other minerals you find in commercial trace element mixes, which may or may not become available to the plants later on.

But once it soaks, it will disintegrate and mess up your tank. What I do, is put a a piece of wet nori on the bottom of a long tequila shot glass, it will stick to the glass, and then put that glass in the tank. Easy to clean up.


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## jake (Feb 20, 2004)

The spinach in the food I make has calcium in it, as does the shells of the shrimp which I leave in the food ( ground up).

I guess I really don't understand why the food has to be high in iodine. Grab a bottle of Seachem Reef Iodide and add a few drops with water change. It doesn't take that much.

Also, it's gerber baby oatmeal, not regular oatmeal.. this is very important as the nutritional and texture properties differ between the two. Also, regular oatmeal is more likely to cloud water. 

Wheat germ contains a wealth of vitamins and nutrients - vitamin E, folic acid, magnesium, thiamin, phosphorus, & zinc.

Gerber's baby oatmeal and wheat germ sound like odd things to be in shrimp/fish food, but check the labels of your commercial fish foods and you'll find wheat flour, brewer's yeast, wheat gluten, and the list goes on and on.

I have recently gotten Cyclop-eez. I am going to make some more homemade food from that recipe but plan to add cyclop-eez this time. If it turns out well I will add it as an optional additive to the recipe.


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## pipefish (Jul 15, 2005)

ok thanks guys  didn't think about asking the maker of the recipe about the reasons you chose those items but i'm glad you answered this  if only i had read this thread before i went to walmart... oh well, i'll see what i can whip up tonight and probably make a little sampler edition . I did find some vitachem in my lfs but it was $23!! too much for food :/ and garlic guard was like $7 so i didn't buy it and instead i just got some garlic from the grocery store. Heres what i'm planning on doing (don't have excact mesurments yet but i'll make it up as i go-
1. Blanch some zuccini, spinach (mostly spinach cause spinach seems to have lots of iodine and lots of calcium), peas
2. grind up the garlic to mush.
3. grind up the shrimp along with shells
4. stick everything back in the grinder along with the vegetables and grind that to mush
5. stick one or two cubes of frozen blood worms in a bag and mush (dont want to use blender cause my mom will kill me but i'm sure its clean)
6. put everything into a bag and throw in some normal tetramin tropical crisps, spirula flakes, and gelatin. 
6. Mix everything like crazy until its a nice mush 
7. get a little of the mix and put it into a seperate bag and stick some nori in there to so i can see if it does mess up the water or not, if not then i'll include it in the mix later on.

hows that sound? oh and of course stick it into the freezer and break off some chunks when i feed


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## jake (Feb 20, 2004)

If you're feeding this only to the shrimp you can omit the peas. Also, you don't want to use ALL of the shrimp shells, just a few here and there. Make sure they're fresh shrimp and not canned or seasoned somehow. I would also omit the bloodworms - there is enough protein in the shrimp you're chopping up and I think adding bloodworms would be overdoing it. I would also omit the tropical crisps, if only feeding shrimp.

Fresh garlic cloves are fine and the garlic guard & vitachem are totally optional, although desireable.

You can play with the quantity of the different ingredients, or if you're feeding to fish go ahead with the peas and whatever else you want to try. Some people have told me that by varying the amount of gelatin they've used, along with some of the dry ingredients, they make it into a floating food but I haven't tried it yet myself. Took me months to run out of the first batch. 

One word of warning though: If you have apple snails or something and don't want them laying eggs like crazy, do not feed the recipe to them. Every time I have fed it to my pomecea bridgesii I have 4-5 new egg clutches in the morning.

edit - Also, the vitachem thing... I have heard of people using a liquid multivitamin that can be purchased at the pharmacy. With vitachem, the maker says the animal does not have to ingest the vitachem to get the vitamins. I do not know if the diy approach ( liquid multivitamin from pharmacy) a) can be absorbed the same way, without ingestion b) is water/tissue soluble c) is a desireable ratio of necessary vitamins. I plan to investigate it as a cheaper diy food ingredient in the near future.

Until then, a 16 fl. oz. bottle is $17.99 at bigalsonline.


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## pipefish (Jul 15, 2005)

ok thanks for the advice  i just found out my mom never bought the shrimp lol i think she might go out again in a minute so i'll try it out tonight, maybe i'll chop up everything first and wait. On the garlic guard what is in it? any vitamins or minerals or just garlic? i might pick up a bottle, will i notice much of a difference in the desirability of the food? (will it attract the shrimp more) Also i do have a Pomecea bridgesii but petsmart called it a mystery snail and i only have 1 of them so i wont have any babies right? will this food make it turn into an asexual snail?  i doubt it but just to make sure he he. Also about the iodine, i do dose 4 drops of kents marine iodine after every water change except everyone at petshrimp say the fish can't take it out of the water column so i want to try to feed them more iodine rich food. Most likely i will be including more spinach and shrimp so i'll have to see how it turns out, when i freeze it and stick it into the tank will it desinegrate? or just stay there in its usual form? and is more gelatin mean they float or less cause i dont want it to float. thanks


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## jake (Feb 20, 2004)

I have not tried variations to get the food to float, so I can't answer that. The recipe as written will not produce a floating food.

Garlic guard contains garlic extract and vitamin c , along with preservatives and what not. It's the best part of garlic ( the stuff in garlic that is supposed to be what makes it healthy). I don' t know if it makes shrimp more attracted to it, but it sure makes fish notice the food. 

As far as the shrimp go, my very first "mystery" snail didn't lay eggs for the first two months I had it. All of a sudden it laid a huge clutch- it being the only snail I had at the time it was perplexing. Unless you've had that single snail a very long time or are sure it is male, I'd say anything is possible.

At petshrimp, they say "the fish" can't take iodine out of the water column.. are they referring to fish or inverts, or just aquaria in general? I would be very interested in seeing that info if you have a link. Personally, I have never seen definitive scientific proof that freshwater shrimp even require iodine supplements, so I'd be very interested in their research.


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## jake (Feb 20, 2004)

I just read through the petshrimp forums. It still looks like a lot of arguing to me. They say it has to be eaten to be absorbed, but that it's not necessary for freshwater shrimp at all in the first place.

All I can tell you definitively is that I have over 1000+ red cherry shrimp and have no molting problems and the only iodine I add on purpose is seachem reef iodide on ocassion. I add it superstitiously, in very small amounts. I wasn't having molting problems when I WASN'T using it and am not killing off my shrimp now that I am ( as was also suggested on that forum).

I feed my shrimp the following:

Hikari crab cuisine
Seaweed Selects by Ocean Nutrition ( which probably does contain iodine)
Omega One veggie rounds
Omega One veggie flakes
My homemade food ( shrimp that are ground up probably contain iodine
:icon_idea )
Cyclop-eeze
Ocassionally regular fish flake food, like Omega One color flakes, shrimp pellets, or various bottom-feeder discs


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## pipefish (Jul 15, 2005)

when i went to my lfs earlier i saw the omega one veggie flakes but i decided to get spirula instead and the seaweed selects is almost the excact same stuff as that nori stuff right? i'll just use some of that cause my mom has a lot of it and the lfs was selling like 50 sheets for $25 and i thought that was pretty expensive :/ probably stick a whole sheet into the mix and see if it does foul up the water, but i dont think it will if its inside the mix along with the gelatin holding everything together. Hopefully my shrimp doesn't have eggs cause i only want one mystery snail and later on i'm planning on getting some olive nerite snails for the tank. Anyways my mom just got home so i'm off to make my first tester batch of shrimp food  probably make a few variations in small amounts to test it out and i might release my formula  he he


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## Safado (Jul 10, 2005)

I have been looking for Hikari Crab Cuisine, and haven't found it. I decided this sounded like a good idea. I used:

1 c wheat germ
1 c baby oatmeal
1 lbs shrimp (mine were pealed, but had tails)
1 clove garlic.
2 Packets Gelatin disolved in 1 c hot water.

I blended all of the tails really well, trying to chop them up. In fact I blended the shrimp and the spinage. The shrimp really seemed to like it, though I am afraid the tails didn't get chopped up enough. The Guppies in my other tank would take a big bite and then spit out the tails (it could be the oatmeal). 

Here are some pics:











Boxing over the leftovers:
http://www.plantedtank.net/imageh/images/65/On_Guard.jpg


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## jake (Feb 20, 2004)

Looks good but it seems to me to be a bit short on plant matter. If you could add spinach, spirulina ( powdered or otherwise) or something similar I think you'd have a more comprehensive shrimp/snail food.

I don't know about the nori thing. I just buy the cheapest Seaweed Selects, which is usually the Brown Marine Algae. I tear off small pieces and just flop on the top of the water and the shrimp start to go to work on it. By the time it softens up and starts falling to the bottom of the tank, it's half gone. The shrimp never leave any leftovers of it. I've considered pre-soaking it just enough to soften it up, chopping it up and adding it to the homemade food as well. If the nori is just seaweed and not processed for human consumption ( bunch of additives/preservatives/sodium, etc) I might have to give it a try also. 

Seaweed selects are 100% natural dried seaweeds ( marine macroalgae) for comparison.


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## pipefish (Jul 15, 2005)

i've already made the food except theres some garlic chunks that i missed and the food had a really strong garlic smell when i made it, is this regular and safe for the fish? hope so :/. I only made one batch and put 1/4 a sheet of nori in it so i'm gonna do a little test and stick the food into a bucket to see if it makes it dirty or not then if it looks nice i'm gonna stick it into the tank for a test try  i'll see how it goes but i did mess up on the recipe a little like i forgot to stick in the garlic earlier and i didnt put the gelatin in hot water so i still hope it holds :/


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## jake (Feb 20, 2004)

Strong garlic smell is fine. Garlic is actually used by a lot of aquariasts as a natural disease/illness inhibitor, to boost the immune system of the fish, etc. I've never known an aquatic animal to die from garlic toxicity.


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## pipefish (Jul 15, 2005)

ok good  i tried some this morning and it was a big hit for my neons and cardinals but my shrimp couldnt' get close but i did see some ghost shrimp waiting to eat the left overs. since then i've moved all the fish from the tank and now it is a shrimp/snail only tank  oh and there is even greater news, i saw a little baby ghost shrimp the size of a brine shrimp (yes i'm sure its a ghost shrimp) woot!!!  so happy now, i'll see if i can get it on camera but i'm 90% positive it is a ghost shrimp. Also after i fed the fish i melted the mix and added some more gelatin, this time i dissolved it in hot water, then i mixed it all in. My result was a semi floating food so i'm quite sure more gelatin = floating food. I'm probably gonna have to do the mix over again cause it deteriorates too much, what do you think i should do? i'm gonna see if i can stick some normal oatmeal that is all grounded up to mush, do you think thats the same as the baby oatmeal? i'll see if i can get some wheat germ also


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## jake (Feb 20, 2004)

I would not use regular oatmeal. I think you'll be looking at some cloudy water for sure with it. The baby section of any drugstore/grocery store/department store should have the gerber baby cereal ( oatmeal).


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## pipefish (Jul 15, 2005)

ok i finally got some of the gerber baby oatmeal but i didnt know where to find the wheat germ  i was in walmart so i'm not too familiar with the whole food area layout but if you ask me where some merchandise is i'll know just not about food cause i dont do the grocery shopping and my mom has never heard of wheat germ and walmart never has anyone walking around in the grocery side but if someone could tell me what section the wheat germ is in and about how big of a box/packet it is in that would be great  i'm probably not gonna look in walmart and go with my mom to the local grocery store to find it. Also when you say 1 clove of garlic does that mean the whole garlic or when you rip it apart and those individual piecies after you rip the skin off? thanks  i'm probably just gonna stick to your recipe jake, i didn't want to use that recipe earlier cause i had other fish in the shrimp tank that i couldn't catch until yesterday so now its a shrimp only tank so no fish to steal my shrimp's food , but i might add a little more spinach to the mix.


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## Safado (Jul 10, 2005)

Wheat Germ, at least the stuff I have, comes in a bottle. I would say there is about three cups to a bottle. It can be found near the regular oatmeal. It is not cracked wheat, but I saw it right next to the cracked wheat the other day. It may also be found in the health food section. 

Just use the small piece of garlic. Use the whole bulb, and youd have some serious issues with the smell in the kitchen.

Also as far as the food breaking down. I added a bit to much, and six hours later it was still clumped together. The only complaint I have is it is difficult to break. I wish I had made it even more thin when I froze it.


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## jake (Feb 20, 2004)

> Just use the small piece of garlic.


Correct - a whole bulb of garlic and you're going to have problems explaining the smell.


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## pipefish (Jul 15, 2005)

ok great cause i wasn't sure if a clove was the whole bulb or not . I might pick up some wheat germ today or tommorow so i can make the recipe soon, i have everythign else though.


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## pipefish (Jul 15, 2005)

ok i already made it but once it got into the water bits and pieces just started flying everywhere :/, most of it stayed together but some of it just started flying off and none of my shrimp were picking at it at that time. Also i stuck one in my bigger tank and when the fish grabbed it a big smoke cloud looking thign came out, is that normal? is there a way to fix this? also was i suppose to grind up the wheat germ and the oatmeal? thanks


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## jake (Feb 20, 2004)

It doesn't sound normal at all. The food, when made following the instructions, doesn't break up and go all over the place, clouds of stuff do not come out of it, and shrimp eat it just fine ( although if just for shrimp you can omit the peas, as I said earlier, and replace with more spinach or something else).

When you're about done chopping up the spinach & peas, you add the garlic and let that get worked in. You add the wheat germ and gerber baby cereal after this, but still in the food processor/mixer. At this point the shrimp should be all chopped up and in a seperate bowl you've set aside.

You take the spinach/peas/garlic/wheat germ/gerber baby cereal mixture you have and combine it with the chopped up shrimp goop. Mix them well. At this point you add any spirulina powder, vitachem vitamins, garlic guard, or whatever similar additives you desire.

Bag it up, smooth them out thin in the ziplock, and off to the freezer it goes.

I don't know what you're doing that is making it cloudy or fall to pieces all over your tank, but it's not normal.


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## pipefish (Jul 15, 2005)

hmmm, heres what i did, i boiled the veg grind up the shrimp but lots of shells were still there, then i chopped up the veg and i threw it into the grinder then when i got a nice fine mix i took it out, i did this cause the shrimp wouldn't get chopped up and all the meat was on the side walls of the grinder so adding the veg would allow it to get mixed up and chopped up. Then i threw everythign in a bowl and threw in the wheat germ and oatmeal, mixed it got a sort of dry mix then i added the gelatin in the hot water after i mixed it and then i mixed everything together along with some spirula (mixed with a spoon if thats important or not). Then i dumped it all into a bag, flatened it to 1/4inch and stuck it into the freezer. Do you see anything wrong that i did? I only used 1/4 of the regular amount on the article cause i only had that much spinach, oh and i used baby spinach if that helps :/.


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## Aquaseafoam (Apr 6, 2006)

Hey, this is a cool idea. I just made some up and waiting for it to freeze. I pretty much followed the recipe on plant geek, except I added some Nori seaweed (the only ingredient listed on the package is seaweed for those who were asking) and I also shaved some cuttlebone and mixed it in there. Hope it works!:bounce:


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