Puddles Posted July 12, 2014 Report Share Posted July 12, 2014 After some reading around the forums, I've decided to try my hand at making shrimp food from scratch. My goal is to make a complete food, that can be a staple part of neocaridinia and caridina diets, that is completely natural and made of high quality ingredients. I've experimented in the past but have done much more research this timeand think I have a good idea on how to do this. I wanted to share what I'm doing so you guys can see my process and hopefulyl we can all bounce ideas around as to how to make it better. I think there's an air of mystery sometimes about how to make food and hopefully we can start to dispel that. This food I'm making has 17 ingredients. It’s a lot, but this is meant to be an everyday food and I want complete nutrition in this food. Ingredients: Alfalfa Leaf Arugula Barley Grass Bee Pollen Bell Pepper Brewers Yeast Decapsulated Brine Shrimp Eggs Broccoli Cauliflower Chard Kale Kelp Montmorillite Clay Peas Soy Beans Spinach Spirulina Stinging Nettles All the plants were bought fresh from a local market that sells only clean, organic produce. Some ingredients, such as montmorillite and kelp, were purchased in powdered form from this same store. Everything was washed thoroughly when I got home, dehydrator included. I dehydrated the plants for 10 hours on the lowest setting to preserve as many nutrients as possible. The only one that didn’t finish in that amount of time was the cauliflower, I had to dry that for another 90 minutes. I used a brand new clean coffee grinder to grind the dehyrdrated produce, using a new one ensured there was no cross contamination with other food. I found the grinder gave a very nice powder. Not perfect, but I think as good as I could get from any source. And per my sense of safety, I washed my hands thoroughyl before hand and wore rubber gloves the whole time. The vegetable balance is pretty even, maybe a little heavy on the peas but those are full of great nutrients so I consider that a plus really. The highest ingredient by weight is soy beans, a lot of the protein comes from that source. It's amazing when you start looking up the nutrition, vitamins, and minerals of different vegetables and other assortments how good some things are for you. I had no idea just how healthy chard was, or cauliflower for that matter. Thus far I have ground all ingredients into a fine powder. This weekend I will be mixing the powder with a distilled water/potassium sorbate/agar agar mix and making the final product. The agar is a binder, and the sorbate is a preservative. Both are safe for shrimp from my research. Nutritional breakdown is: Fat: 8.76% Protein: 31.28% Fiber: 12.10% Ash: 0.9% (does not include the montmorillite) The remainder is carbohydrates and water weight. Then, on top of this I added 4.7% montmorillite. These figures will likely change after the product is finished, as water % will change. For the protein, the breakdown is: 10.61% Soy Bean 9.59% Vegetable 4.60% Spirulina 4.37% Decapsulated brine shrimp eggs 2.12% Brewers Yeast Looking forward to making this food and seeing how it goes. Some pictures of the process so far below: Rainbow chard in the dehydrator: Rainbow Chard dried, out of the dehydrator: Ground chard fresh in coffee grinder: High5's, countryboy12484 and h4n 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duff0712 Posted July 12, 2014 Report Share Posted July 12, 2014 (edited) Looks solid! Will definitely follow this and maybe borrow some ideas good luck!!! What grinder are you using? -Duffy Edited July 12, 2014 by Duff0712 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soothing Shrimp Posted July 12, 2014 Report Share Posted July 12, 2014 Did you try the espresso setting? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metageologist Posted July 12, 2014 Report Share Posted July 12, 2014 Very interesting, will be following. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Puddles Posted July 12, 2014 Author Report Share Posted July 12, 2014 (edited) Did you try the espresso setting?I bought a cheap one, no settings at all! You push the button to grind and let go to stop. It's a Mr. Coffee brand grinder, the box literally just says "Mr. Coffee Coffee Grinder." It was $15 at Kmart, I think it's $10 on Amazon. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Edited July 12, 2014 by Puddles Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soothing Shrimp Posted July 12, 2014 Report Share Posted July 12, 2014 Good price Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chibikaie Posted July 12, 2014 Report Share Posted July 12, 2014 This looks great! Very inspirational. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metageologist Posted July 12, 2014 Report Share Posted July 12, 2014 If you ever are looking for a new grinder with adjustability. I got a good one at Walmart for 15$. It is a true burmill grinder. It goes from very course to near dust. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Puddles Posted July 13, 2014 Author Report Share Posted July 13, 2014 Metageologist -- that sounds like a cool grinder. My closest Walmart is 25 minutes from me so I went with the local Kmart. Might upgrade in the future. I went ahead and made the food. It was difficult and required concentration and was undeniably tedious. I read Shrimp Daddy’s guide on making sinking food and basically used his recipe with the slightest of modifications. My recipe was 1/3 powdered food, 2/3 water, 0.5% agar agar, and .05% potassium sorbate. I mixed all the powdered food I made before together, I added some ground barley as well. Then mixed that powder with the water/agar solution. I made the mistake of not letting the water cool and burned the crap out of my fingers. Spread the mixture out on wax paper on a cookie sheet. It’s hard to get it to a consistent thickness using your hands but I got pretty close. I didn’t want to use a roller because I thought it would have stuck to the food a lot. It hindsight I think I could make it work. Once it was spread out, I used a cookie cutter to cut the whole mixture into little rectangles and baked it on my lowest setting, with the door open, for 30-40 minutes. I don’t remember exactly, I just checked it every 5 minutes until it was dry. The longest, hardest, most tedious part was breaking it into the little pieces. Even though I cut it pre-baking, the edges still stuck together and it just took a while going through it all. But so far, the food is a big success. It holds together well in water. It sinks instantly. My shrimp fight over it harder than they’ve ever fought over another food. I’ve been doing shrimp for 4 years and honestly shrimp fighting over food like this has been very rare for me. I’m really happy and think it’s been a real success. Pics! Mixed final powder: All sliced up: All done (almost): All bagged up: Thes tablets have been in this cup of water for 8 hours: And the final whistle, how did the shrimp like it? Well here is what happened when I put it in my Taiwan Bee tank (had to link Youtube, too big of a file to upload). If anyone knows how to embed Youtube videos on this forum let me know: http://youtu.be/-pElSakzEXs chibikaie 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duff0712 Posted July 13, 2014 Report Share Posted July 13, 2014 Lookin good, nice job!!! -Duffy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jayr_Tigley Posted July 13, 2014 Report Share Posted July 13, 2014 Question: How were you able to know the nutritional facts? Sorry for being stupid ;P Im thinking of making shrimpfood of my own but im afraid that i might turn it into a protein food than a base food Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jayr_Tigley Posted July 13, 2014 Report Share Posted July 13, 2014 And how much weight of the water was lost after baking? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spialz Posted July 13, 2014 Report Share Posted July 13, 2014 Those shrimp seem to really love it! And to embed the video, just paste the link in plain text. The forum automatically detects its a youtube video and embeds it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Puddles Posted July 13, 2014 Author Report Share Posted July 13, 2014 And how much weight of the water was lost after baking? Into the dough went 180 grams of powdered veggies, and after baking it weighed 185. I could air dry it some more and get it lower I think. As for figuring out nutrition, I spent hours looking up the nutrition facts for every item that went into it, making an excel spreadsheet, and adding it up. Took a while converting everything, for example if I got nutrition facts for a 60 gram serving of arugula but I only had 20 grams in my food, then I had to take all the nutrition facts and multiply by 20/60 to get what was in my food. The ratios weren't always so nice though. In addition, sometimes all I could find was that spinach has (these numbers are made up) 20% daily value of iron. Ok, now I had to look up the recommended daily value of iron for humans and do the math from there. In addition to protein/fiber etc I also know exactly how much vitamin a, vitamin c, calcium, iron, b6, and a few others. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Puddles Posted July 13, 2014 Author Report Share Posted July 13, 2014 Those shrimp seem to really love it! And to embed the video, just paste the link in plain text. The forum automatically detects its a youtube video and embeds it. Thanks! Wish I knew that before I wasted a surprisingly long amount of time last night :/ Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Puddles Posted July 13, 2014 Author Report Share Posted July 13, 2014 Shrimp are nice and active today. Seem to have nice energy and certainly nothing seems amiss. I fed again, roughly 18 hours later. Very soon I know but I wanted to see if they would eat it again so soon, figuring if they did they really must like it. Shrimp attacked it again quickly, some little TBs were eating at it when a large Mischling female came over, decided the food was hers, and dragged it away lol. Another vid: http://youtu.be/lyGyKEg2Agc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pika Posted July 15, 2014 Report Share Posted July 15, 2014 Spread the mixture out on wax paper on a cookie sheet. It’s hard to get it to a consistent thickness using your hands but I got pretty close. I didn’t want to use a roller because I thought it would have stuck to the food a lot.Cooking tip you may or may not be aware of... You can roll your "dough" between two sheets of waxed paper (or parchment paper) to keep it from sticking (as long as it's not super-super sticky, and you don't mind patting down a rough texture on the top) and use two strips of cardboard or plastic down the edges to keep it neat and to limit it to a max height. Alternatively, you can get these rubber rings to go on your rolling pin that do the same thing, like so: Thanks so much for the detailed journal!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OblongShrimp Posted July 15, 2014 Report Share Posted July 15, 2014 awesome! I have thought about making my own foods as well so I appreciate the writeup! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Puddles Posted July 15, 2014 Author Report Share Posted July 15, 2014 That rolling pin trick is genius Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
countryboy12484 Posted July 15, 2014 Report Share Posted July 15, 2014 Great job puddles. .. had to make ya proud when they mobbed the food. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Puddles Posted July 16, 2014 Author Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 Just an update. 4th time feeding this food, they still seem to like it, video below. I have sent some samples out to other people to get their opinions. High5's 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greenteam Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 Looks tedious but worth it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Puddles Posted July 19, 2014 Author Report Share Posted July 19, 2014 I sent some samples out to some people and have received *awesome* feedback. Looking forward to hearing from the guys on this forum soon. Duff0712 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
countryboy12484 Posted July 20, 2014 Report Share Posted July 20, 2014 Shrimp loved it puddles thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Puddles Posted July 20, 2014 Author Report Share Posted July 20, 2014 Great to hear! Thanks for the feedback! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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