Feeding Discus

The discus come from the Amazon, a geographical area where the water is of very high quality but very poor in nutrients. For this reason, the bodies of these fish have evolved to absorb all their nutritional needs from the food they can get, which in their habitat consists mainly of small fish and a variety of crustaceans. This means that discus are almost strictly carnivorous and therefore require a protein-rich diet, though not without a vegetable component and vitamins. To keep discus healthy and growing optimally, the best approach is to give them a great variety of foods. It is advisable that they get used to eating dry preparations, for convenience and because anyone can then feed them in your absence. There is also frozen food on the market based on live foods such as artemia, daphnia and mosquito larvae, which discus will readily accept. However, the basis of their diet should be a mash (or paste) made from beef or poultry heart, supplemented with fish and vegetables as a base, although you can add many more things that will surely be beneficial and will keep our discus perfectly fed. Personally I use beef heart as the base of the mash I make, because it offers me the most guarantees: it is all muscle and these animals are never given hormones, unlike poultry. Beef heart is pure protein. Next I present the following recipe: Ingredients of the mixture: This is the recipe I normally use, changing something each time I make it, depending on the season and on what is available on the market. Unless otherwise stated, all the foods used in the recipe are fresh: • 500 g of veal or beef heart. • 1 kg of mussels. • 500 g of forkbeard or any white fish. • 250 g of prawns (shrimp, crayfish). • 500 g of spinach. • 3 carrots. • 2 egg yolks. • 1 banana. • 1 peeled apple. • 1 kiwi, or strawberries, or raspberries, etc. (Vitamin C) • 3 cloves of garlic. • Vitamins. More things can be added: sweet peppers, beetroot, wheat germ, squid (they must be chopped very finely, because if big chunks remain they could contaminate the water), a colourless gelatine (it helps bind the mixture so that it does not fall apart in the aquarium), peas, flake, stick or granule food, spirulina, etc. Necessary utensils: I will detail step by step how the mixture is prepared: To prepare the mixture you need: • Several containers in which to place the ingredients before and after chopping them. • A knife to chop many of the ingredients before using the blender. • A cutting board. • A couple of saucepans to cook some ingredients, and a spatula or a knife to remove them. • Freezer bags. • And, of course, a blender or mincer. I use one with a jug. It is very good for this and quite convenient. Beef heart: The fundamental part of the recipe is beef heart. If you do not like working with it, you can ask the butcher to trim off the fat and cut it, even to mince it in a hamburger machine. If we do it ourselves (the results will be better, unless you are a great friend of the butcher and so he will not lose too much time on it), you need a very sharp knife and must remove all the fat (white parts), fibrous parts and nerves, leaving only the meaty parts. The heart is cut into pieces and then put through the blender. White fish: The fish-based ingredients are fundamental. In many recipes taken from the Internet I found that they mostly use hake. In my opinion it is too fatty. I use forkbeard or any similar fish, which comes as fillets free of scales and bones. Everything goes into the mincer. Prawns or shrimp: I cut off the heads, tails and legs of the prawns (shrimp), but I leave most of the shell. It carries calcium and helps bind the mixture so that it does not fall apart... one of the biggest problems faced by anyone who makes a mixture for their discus for the first time. Mussels: The mussels are steamed (with a couple of fingers of water in a covered pot) until they open. They are cleaned very well and the beards and hard parts are removed, as well as the shells, of course. Squid: As for the squid, they must be cleaned very well and their skin removed. You must be very careful that no pieces are left unchopped, because they have a certain toughness. It is normally the first thing I put through the blender. You get a sticky mixture with a consistency similar to glue. Very well bound, to prevent the mixture from dispersing on contact with water. Vegetables, Broccoli: The "green" part is essential. The base of the green part is spinach, but I also include a little broccoli. In fact, if it were not just because it falls apart so much, I would increase the amount of broccoli. Broccoli is the vegetable with the highest nutritional value per unit weight of edible product. The contribution of vitamins, mainly C, B2 (lactogenic) and provitamin A, is high; and it also provides significant amounts of minerals such as Ca, K and especially P. The spinach is boiled lightly (when it comes to the boil, remove it immediately). If broccoli is used, it can be left five minutes on a low heat. Carrots need more time (about 20 minutes is enough for them to be soft). The rest of the fruits and vegetables are used raw, except the beetroot, which can already be bought prepared, or boiled ourselves (like the carrots). In the past spinach was considered the best of the vegetables, much appreciated for its nutritional value and its richness in vitamins. Nowadays, attention Popeye!, laboratories indicate that broccoli is the most complete vegetable from the nutritional point of view. However, spinach is recognised as one of the vegetables with the highest vitamin A content, standing out among the others for its high content of calcium, phosphorus, iron, potassium and sodium. Medicinally, it is a laxative, and its high iron content makes it a food with strong anti-anaemic power. Carrots: The appreciation of the carrot as a product of great nutritional value, in which carotenoids are a complement of provitamin A, which is then broken down into retinol or vitamin A in the human body. Moreover, this appreciation has increased, especially since the 1970s, because various laboratories showed that foods rich in pigments such as anthocyanins, carotenoids, chlorophyll and flavonoids had the ability to prevent certain cardiovascular diseases, some types of cancer and cellular ageing, thanks to their antioxidant properties. For us, we are also interested in their ability to enhance the colour of our discus in a natural and healthy way. Beetroot: Beetroot is rich in mineral salts. Its nutritional value is similar to that of the carrot. It has a lot of carotene, of great importance for the vitality of the organism in general and also for the colour of the discus in a natural way. Green pepper: I also use fresh green pepper (not hot) and mango, a tropical fruit that besides vitamins has anthelmintic effects similar to those of garlic, as we will see later. Banana: Banana carries potassium and is another of our allies for binding the mixture. Strawberries, kiwi and raspberries: On this occasion we use raspberries because it is seasonal fruit, but on other occasions I use strawberries or kiwis as fruits rich in vitamin C. Peas: As a supplement to the vegetable part, peas can be added (what in some American countries are called "green peas"). It is one of the vegetables that provides the greatest amount of carbohydrates and proteins per unit weight, standing out as an important source of amino acids, including lysine. It is a food with significant contents of minerals (P and Fe) and vitamins, especially B1. Their laxative effects are also important, which prevents intestinal blockages, to which discus are prone. I prefer to use them canned, as seen in the photo, since frozen ones have to be thawed and opened and so the cold chain is broken. They can also be used fresh, but then we also have to remove the skins and they are more work. Garlic: Garlic is a fundamental ingredient of the mixture. The characteristic smell and taste of garlic explain its use as a flavouring for foods, with another, no less well-known use, as a medicine. Its recognised pharmacological effects include its bactericidal power, its anticoagulant and anticholesterol action, and its exceptional role as an anthelmintic, fighting and preventing the presence of internal parasites. Three cloves of garlic are enough. They must be finely chopped and crushed to make sure they are well distributed throughout the mixture. I use a garlic press, as seen in the photo, which makes the task more convenient and effective. Egg: Two hard-boiled egg yolks are also added. The whites are discarded. We do not have to put this ingredient through the blender, as it could contaminate the water excessively. It carries proteins and vitamins, especially those of groups A, B, D and K. Sweet pepper: An ingredient that carries natural carotenes to enhance the colouring of the discus: sweet pepper. It also carries vitamins and promotes the fertility of the males. Hot pepper must not be used. Dry food: Dry foods can also be added, especially spirulina tablets, also flakes, granules or sticks, in moderation. It is a good moment to incorporate into our fish's diet those foods we bought thinking they would be good for them... but they never liked. Vitamins: The recipe for this mixture contains by itself all the vitamins that discus need in their diet. It was really not necessary to add anything else. However, if a small amount of vitamins is added, it is above all to complement the portion of vitamin D, basic for discus, and to compensate for those lost in the freezing and thawing process. There is no point in overusing these preparations or other pharmacy products. You can use 3 capsules of Pharmaton Complex (remove the capsule and add the powder) or add Dayamineral drops (30 drops are enough) or Sera Fishtamin (a whole bottle, which costs quite a lot more), and nothing else is needed. Vitamins are basic in the diet of discus. Bear in mind that water-soluble vitamins (B and C) can be administered in the water (although their usefulness is doubtful, since freshwater fish, unlike sea fish, do not drink water), whereas fat-soluble ones (A, D, E and K) are only assimilated through food. Bear in mind that it is not good to exceed the use of vitamins… while water-soluble ones present no problems, fat-soluble ones do, and can cause problems through hypervitaminosis. Vitamin D is extremely important to avoid the appearance of the so-called "hole-in-the-head disease" associated with hexamita. Wheat germ: Wheat germ contains fibre to improve the intestinal tract and vitamins, and once again it helps bind the mixture so that it does not fall apart and contaminate the water. Preparation: Once all the ingredients have been ground with the help of the blender, we mix them well in a container with the help of a knife or a wooden spoon. In the photograph you can see the different ground ingredients, not yet mixed, each with its own peculiar texture. You must check carefully that there are no fatty chunks of any food left unchopped, since at feeding time that would be a wasted meal and would naturally pollute the water. One of the usual problems when preparing the mixture is that it falls apart on contact with water and pollutes it. We have already given some pointers to avoid that, but one reinforcement is the addition at this moment, when everything is already chopped and mixed, of one or two sachets of neutral gelatine. Stir well. When stirring you should obtain a homogeneous mixture, with a consistency at least similar to that of toothpaste. As for the gelatine, in my opinion it is fine just as I say, but there are people who use two sachets of gelatine, and there are also those who hydrate it beforehand with lukewarm water, and finally those who put everything together and pass it through a bain-marie. To me it seems fine to do none of this, and I believe that with these steps vitamins are lost and nothing is gained. For me the real secret for it not to fall apart is not the gelatine. The gelatine helps, but it cannot do everything. What really matters is to use raw materials that are not only nutritious but also binding (the banana, the squid, the wheat germ, the prawns with shell, etc.) and to chop the ingredients to just the right degree. Strawberries cannot be chopped as much (they release water) as squid, which requires minutes of chopping and consistency, and there are even parts that resist and those small pieces must be removed. In general, fruits and vegetables are chopped very lightly (it is enough to leave them at the consistency of toothpaste, no more, or else when thawed they will be liquid and break apart) and the same goes for all the other ingredients, bearing in mind that squid requires a lot of chopping, somewhat less for the heart and a little less for the prawns. The fish should be at a middle point between the prawns and the vegetables. And as advice, it is better to cut too short (you can always give it one more pass through the blender at the end, even when it is already mixed) than to overdo it (the gelatine cannot work miracles with an excessively liquid mass). Freezing: All that is left is to distribute the mixture into plastic bags for later freezing. It is important that the slabs are not too thick, since in that case they would be hard to break apart once frozen. A thickness of 0.5 cm is ideal. It is important to label the bags with the date of preparation. In a good freezer, this mixture keeps for three months in perfect condition. If you add any medication to a slab of mixture, it is very important to label it with this date, so as not to administer it when it is not needed. Feeding the fish: At feeding time, pieces of the appropriate size are cut and thawed for a few minutes with some water from the aquarium itself. It is important to do this and drain off the remaining liquid so as not to add excess phosphates to the water, which could favour the appearance of algae. It is also not good to give the mixture to the discus without thawing it, as it could cause intestinal problems.