Zen is my new little oranda and I want her wen to grow nice and big! Whilst reading through some threads about wens here it was put forward that high-protein foods are good for wen growth. I have some bloodworms and am purchasing Hikari Oranda Gold pellets from eBay.

I was thinking of using bloodworms, the hikari stuff, peas, broccoli and tubifex worms in some super special wen formula wotsit (that's basically a lists of all the things I know that Zen likes eating so far, asides from the Hikari pellets of course)

Can anyone give me some guidelines on how much of these things to put in? My last attempt at gel food didn't go very well because I did something wrong with the gelatin. Could someone help me come up with a recipe?

hi FITF..on the main page along the side I belive there is recipes ...(I also hear keeping water at the low range of the excepted water temp may also help ) not sure though ..Genetics play a huge role also.When I feed high protien foods I like to do extra waterchanges ..I do this for a peice of mind for myself ..I'm not sure if it makes a difference (but to say the least I hate letting my tanks go 3 days without waterchange )..dosn't it feeel like your feeding little bodybuilders ..LOL..making sure they get the right amount of this or that to grow this or that..too funny ..good luck with the gel food I hear it smells great !!! your family will love you for it gel food recipes are at the very bottom of the main page on the side under fry food ..

Cheers hi-d ^_^

I also saw the 'home foods' that koko has posted:

"Some fish foods that you and I eat the fish can eat to for example: Romaine lettuce, Peas cooked, earthworms, eggs, cucumber, insect larvae, grapes,oranges, and spinach. This is just a short list of some of the foods."

It suggests eggs! How would you go about serving eggs? Hard-boiled I'd imagine?

I also want to try both of them with earthworms but I don't have a garden, so I can't find any

I belive it would be the hardboiled yolk (this you can feed small fry) so assume it would benefit adult fish as well in gel food for protien ( it is very messy if it is not in gel food ) I thought of using earth worms but you run the risk of unwanted bacteria and since our soil can contain metals I assume an earthworm can aswell (just my theory)..

Good point about the soil....



...ooooooh you know you're obsessed when you start thinking about keeping your own earthworm farm just to feed your goldies

as long as we don't start knitting little hats ,coats and booties for them I think we are ok!!!!

No I think I got the goldie bug really bad.... I counted up all my Birthday money and the first thing I thought of buying with it was a new, bigger fish tank

I throw in whatever I have in the fridge or whatever is fresh from the garden. For protien, what about frozen brine shrimp, daphnia, blood worms, spirilana, krill, tuna, etc? I like Goldfish Connection's seafood flakes - they are great for smaller fry - crumbled up and wet - or fantastic for tossing into gel food for any fish.

I cook up my veggies and protien food on the stove in a small amount of water - about 2 cups. Toss in any floating pelleted food - it is a good way to use up floating food. (High Protien growth food made for pond koi is good and cheap - but floats. Toss it in the cooking pot - it will soften and soak up water - and not float). Then toss the whole potfull of mush into a blender and blend it until it is a nice milkshake consistancy - a slurry.

Stir 3 packets of Knox Gelatin - unflavored - into about 1/2 cup cool water. Stir this gently into the 2+ cups of slurry. Pour it into a shallow dish and chill until set.

You can make small amounts of food this way - about 3 cups or less. I can use 3 cups up in less than a week, but if not, I suggest cutting it after it is set. Set each cut cube separately on a cookie sheet and freeze. When frozen, pop the cubes off the sheet and drop them into a freezer bag. You can now pull out just one cube - or many. They thaw within minutes and will keep in the freezer for quite a while.

oh yes a true addict ...my mom told me she was gonna give me a gift card for my birthday from wal~mart and I have specific orders to spend the money on MYSELF not the fish ...LOL ...

Thanks daryl! Only problem is I always have trouble converting 'cups' - what is one cup in say, ounces or grams?

For protein I have bloodworms as you have suggested in your list and we always have tuna in the house. I bought some tubifex worms for Near but he didn't like them, but I've discovered that Zen just can't get enough! I'll pop those in purely because she likes them I'm going to put in some hard-boiled egg yolk too.

I've just ordered 300g of Hikari Oranda pellet stuff so that will probably arrive by Monday. And I bought algae wafers yesterday too, but they were harder than I expected. I assume they'll soften in the boiling process.


Ooooh I want to make it now but I have to wait for the Hikari stuff!



But if you spend it on the fish that will make YOU feel good ^_^

One fluid ounce UK is just slightly more than one fluid ounce US (1 oz UK = .96 oz US), and a US cup is 8 ounces. A UK pint is about 19 US ounces, or a bit over 2 cups US.

I also found all kinds of online converters by typing "US UK ounce" into google.

cheers cometgirl! that's really handy, that's going straight into my notebook lol