We first introduced you to Dr. Tim’s aquatics DIY frozen fish food in March, and received a complete set of Bene-FISH-al fish food and Bene-FISH-al extras kit to review. We tested out the product and came up with a few of our own recipes for this easy to use Do It Yourself frozen fish food.
Dr Tim’s is a powdered fish food which, when mixed with hot water, can be frozen into DIY customizable fish food. Bene-FISH-al uses all wholesome ingredients, Salmon, Blueberries, Carrots, Spinach & Menhaden but it is free of most binders and fillers like flour and gluten which can result in stringy fish poop.
A 2.5 oz package of Dr. Tim’s Bene-FISH-al can make up to 10 ounces of food and while it might seem time consuming to make your own fish food, this approach is much more cost effective, and customizable to address the needs of more demanding fish species.
Dr. Tim’s can also be ‘customized with Bene-Fish-al Extras which are spice grinders pre-loaded with Seaweed, Peas, Garlic, Mealworms or Gammarus, River Shrimp and a Spirulina shaker. Dr. Tim even recommends incorporate fish medicine into your own fish food formula.
The grinders came with an informational card describing the benefits of each extra. We like to feed our corals with various particle sizes, and we have seen the Reef Builders fish food mix using a combination of ingredient, so we decided to mix up the extras and come up with our own Dr. Tim’s recipes.
These are by no means set in stone and we recommend you play around with all the ingredients to see what your fish like best. We even tried grinding ingredient directly in our tank first to see how the fish would react.We came up with these three food combinations, using around 20 shaker turns of each extra ingredient.
- Immune Boost: Peas, Garlic, Spirulina and Grammarus. Peas are great for your fish’s digestive system and will help pass any gluten fish may have consumed from other products. Garlic and Spirulina for vitamines and super boosting nutrients, Grammarus for protein.
- Protein Shake: Peas, Meal Worms, River Shirmp and Spirulina. Meal worms and River shirmp provide a great source of protein while the peas work on the digestive system and Spirulina for nutrients. Spirulina is also good for overall health and color of fish.
- Vitamin Mix: Garlic, Seaweed and Spirulina. We left out the peas in this one as the Garlic and Spirulina have very small particle size, while the seaweed is a familiar fish food and easily digested.
The 2.5oz pouch of powdered fish food is mixed with 1/2 cup of boiling water. We separated this in three parts and stirred in the extra ingredients. The contents fit perfectly in the cube tray and made 91 frozen fish food cubes. Even using 20 turns of each grinder ( a bit more for the Meal Worms and River Shrimp) there was plenty of extra left in each grinder.
To mix up the Bene-FISH-al extras we sprinkled them on top a paper plate and then used a small dixie cup to mix the powdered fish food, water and extras together. The paper plate and dixie cups worked perfectly to pour over the freezer tray, and we have very little mess to clean up when fished.
We let the cubes set over night, however the package says they will freeze in two hours. All the frozen cubes popped our perfectly for the tray and I almost wanted to start all over and make more.
We tested out the frozen cubes on some hungry fish, who all seemed to get very excited for the Protein Shake cube, which contained some of the larger food (Meal Worms and River Shrimp). The fish didn’t seem to go for the Vitamin mix as voraciously as the Protein or Immune, so when I go to make these a second time, I would consider adding in one of the meatier protein extras (Grammarus, Worms or Shrimp).
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