Hillstream Loaches Love DIY Homemade Food
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- Опубликовано: 11 янв 2021
- Hillstream loaches are entertaining oddball fish that spend their days grazing off of algae and biofilm in the home aquarium (when they’re not chasing each other, playing in the current, or spawning).
In this video, I show how I prepare DIY homemade fish food for my hillstream loaches, which they really enjoy. While making fish food from scratch can be a bit time consuming, it is fairly easy to make food that is both significantly lower cost and higher quality than commercially available dry alternatives. As long as you take the dietary needs of your particular fish into account, making food yourself allows you to use only the freshest ingredients and avoid unnecessary fillers or preservatives.
This video has two parts. Firstly, I discuss my experiences with the hillstream loach diet (focusing specifically on the sewellia lineolata species) and how that impacted my choice of ingredients. Secondly, I show the complete step by step process of how I made the food (cooking portion of the video begins 4:20).
As discussed, my homemade recipe contains only fresh, healthy ingredients and supplements my loaches diet which also includes active grazing of algae and every surface in the tank, fresh vegetables, and algae wafers.
The food I prepared is gelatin based, with ingredients in the following ratio:
.25 ounces gelatin powder
1 cup bottled spring water
2 cups fresh/frozen ingredients (mostly veggies with some other goodies mixed in)
Hope you enjoy the video and feel free to comment below! 
Животные
Nice video, I bought some Hill stream loaches a month ago 8 of them and now they're breeding. Already spotted 8-10 tiny baby hill streams.
Can u give few of them to me pls i am too looking forward to breed them , i am from South Indian 🙏😭
I am also from South India bro where you from me kerala 🙂@@Giridharan029
Awesome recipe. I just got six of these little guys. I'm worried they're not getting enough to eat so I've looking for ideas of what to feed them. This is very helpful.
Thank you so much for sharing your recipe. I am going to do it. Great video.
they do seem to like it , great video
A very well put together video! When I have some time I will definitely have a go at making my own fish food. The price for good quality prepared food goes up all the time and I'm sure your recipe is far better for our fish.
Thanks! Agreed for most prepackaged food, especially the smaller portions, when you try to reconcile the unit price with the ingredients it doesn't usually make a whole lot of sense...
I will have to try that with my loaches.
Like your vids mate. Subbed
Looks delicious! For my fish I mean 😂. I need to try this out.
Great video. Thanks
That’s great, thanks so much.
Subscribed straight away thanks
Thx for sharing the recipe. I was struggling dosing spinach to the tank, so this is a great way to solve this problem.
Happy to help. One of the big advantages of DIY food is the ability to force your fish to eat their veggies!
I must have done something wrong, because the food does not sink :-( Maybe too little gelatine!?
Hmmm, not sure the amount of gelatine impacts buoyancy, for me the food floats either because it's still a bit frozen or because of tiny air bubbles that got caught in the mixture during the preparation process. Maybe try letting the food thaw out longer before dropping in tank? I usually wait til the cubes are moist and almost room temperature. Also wouldn't hurt to give the food a slight squeeze before dropping in, in case there are any air bubbles that can be pushed out. Let me know if that works.
Yes, thawing the food mix helps of course. But although it sinks, it also disintergrates. Next time I will have to increase the amount of gelatine. Anyway, the fish like it! So thx again for sharing.
Iam going to make it … thanks for the info … ❤
thanks for the video!
This is great. Going to try making this for my fish as they don't seem to be interested in the rapashy soilent green. Thanks.
thanks, good luck!
I never fed garlic to my pet fish but i know its very popular as a fishing scent, used them from bass to salmon. Another one you can try is anise scent. Most game fish likes that also.
Just made some tonight. Added baby brine shrimp and brine shrimp cubes instead of frozen shrimp. Everything else the same. Looking forward to seeing if my Hillstreams, Otos and Neo Shrimps like them. Thanks. Great instructions. Edited to add: Put some in my tank: baby Borneo sucker keeps jumping on and off it..trying it out. I'll give them a day for more to discover it's food. I put one in my shrimp tank...they're all swarming it! Not sure what they think yet, as they swarm every new food thing I put in there. LOL
nice! yeah neos will eat just about anything
Great video thanks for sharing! I'm definitely going to try this for my hillstream tank! One batch seems like it will last a long time and it seems super healthy. What's your opinion of using the Xtreme fish foods spirulina flake in this recipe?
Sure, don't see why not. Especially if it's a food your fish are familiar with that could help with the feeding response to the new food. I haven't used that particular brand before but it looks like it has a good ingredient list and ranking. And yea, unless you have monster fish, even a fairly small batch of homemade food like this goes a long way!
I’ll definitely have to try this. The garlic definitely surprised me
Fantastic video with detailed descriptions backed by great arguments. I am definitely going to try this recipe.
Have you had any success breeding them?
Thanks! Sure have, I've attached a link to my hillstream loach breeding video below:
ruclips.net/video/Fl_VMzCl_GA/видео.html
super nicee
I made this food and it was a hit with my hillstream loaches. Thank you so much. Should I feed this food exclusively to replace the commercial food (I have Hikari algae wafers and Repashy Soilent Green)?
Id offer all different foods, that way they get a variety and dont end up lacking something in their diet
Great video and definitely something I’ll try here in the near future but question… truly just asking not hating bc I see lots of value in your freshness…. Isn’t a repashy powder mix kind of the same thing? Protein, spirulina, veggies, garlic etc? Or are you basically making your own (fresher) repashy?
Repashy is an excellent food, but still contains preservatives and costs much more than diy option. Also, not sure how their powder is prepared, but diy ensures you don't use very high heat which denatures some enzymes and vitamins.
Really amazing preparation technique! but won't it spoil the water if the food is left in for a day?
Great question, and apologies in advance for the lengthy answer! This food is mostly unboiled fresh vegetable matter which is not likely to spoil the water assuming a reasonable quantity is added to begin with. In general, excess food can spoil water in two ways- it can drop your dissolved oxygen as bacteria break it down and/or it can create an ammonia/nitrite spike. Fresh veggies (which again are not boiled) in small quantities are not likely to cause problems in either of these two ways because they break down very slowly (less oxygen demand) and are lower in proteins than meatier foods. Proteins are what typically contain high levels of nitrogen and are more likely to cause ammonia spikes, as ammonia is a waste form of nitrogen. So in other words veggies are easier on your filtration to begin with. I also feed my hillstreams 3-4 leaves of fresh spinach weekly, and they really enjoy it once it's been sitting in the tank for a few days and softened up.
Makes sense! Thank you
Can you tell us How we can make this vegitable Food..
I mean Step by step..plezz..?
dang, I hope this works out for my chinese hillstream's
I just made the fish food that you showed.I have 6 hillstream loaches in a 30 gallon high tank along with panda garras and 4 ottos.They will not eat any food I offer them.I have been keeping alot of algae on the sides of the tank but i recently lost one garra and so i feel like that is not enough.What else should I do.Thanks lorie
What kind of algae do you have growing on the glass and how long have you had the hillstream loaches? If it's a softer algae (like hair algae, diatoms, blue green, etc.) the loaches already know how to eat it and are not going hungry. Also, if the loaches are new it can take quite some time for them to learn to eat any sort of prepared food or pellet but they should be fine living off appropriate kinds of algae until then.
@@kissaquaticsystems5525 I havent had them very long maybe a month.I do feed them bacter ae to make the biofilm grow,I dont have any diatom algae its mostly green. and they didnt like the food I made them so I was wondering if I could just use spirulina spinich and the gelatin. I am planning on getting a 40 gallon breeder for them and making a river tank out of it I think they might like that better.It seems everyone is doing fine now i just keep trying diffrent things.thanks so much for your videos and help sincerely lorie
Sure, that should work fine. Sometimes with the hillstreams they take their time getting used to new environments and new food sources, a few months is perfectly normal. As long as they look good and there's algae and food in the tank I really wouldn't worry at all.
Hi.. What brand of spirulina did you use?
I got mine from bulk reef supply, not sure it matters much though as long as there are no additives.
I have hydras in my tank. Will they be harmful to my fish?
I made this relatively the same, but it floats and falls apart in the tank. What did I do wrong?
It can float if not fully defrosted and/or if significant amount of air bubbles are trapped in the food during the mixing process. If you defrost in tank water before dropping in and gently squeeze a few times the air bubbles should leave and the food will sink better. Falling apart over time is not necessarily a problem- your fish will hunt down all the pieces. However, if you don't like the consistency then in future batches you may want to increase the amount of gelatin.
Do i have to use spirulina ? hard to find, or its SUPER expesive here : /
If that's the case then feel free to swap it out with something else, or maybe just add an extra shrimp or two to the recipe for more protein. Spirulina is nice to have for all the concentrated proteins and vitamins, but I wouldn't say it's absolutely 100% essential to the success of the food overall.
@@kissaquaticsystems5525 Thanks for the advise. Ill try with some extra shrimps.
How often do you feed your loaches with that mixture?
I feed one square per week, it's usually gone within a day or so.
@@kissaquaticsystems5525 Can this be a daily feed for Angels and whiptail catfishes? Or is this to be given occasionally? Great vid, very informative!
It's a veggie heavy omnivore food, so probably good for whiptails (assuming they figure out it's food, which is sometimes a slow process for them). The angels may prefer meatier food so for them in particular you may want to adjust the recipe and add more shrimp or other aquatic proteins. I feed this food once per week, no particular reason. It's not a problem from a water quality perspective given all fresh ingredients so feel free to feed as often as you choose.
@@kissaquaticsystems5525 Thanks mate, much appreciated.
@@kissaquaticsystems5525 Jeremy, just a feedback. Could you add "Gel" or maybe "Gel Fish Food" in the video title or maybe in the search keywords. I had seen this video couple of months back, but this time it was a task to get to your video. Then I finally remembered that I was looking for Hillstream loach food and I could get to your video. Subscribed this time so that I don't miss the new videos.
How often should we feed our loaches?
I feed 2 squares of this homemade food once per week and also feed 1 large algae wafer daily. How much you feed overall depends on how many loaches you have and whether there's edible algae growing in the tank. I used to only feed the tank once per week (sometimes even less) until my colony took off, which took a few years.
Is this good for goldfish as well
Yes, mine do eat it. If you're making food for goldfish specifically though, you may want to consider adding a bit more shrimp or other aquatic protein to the recipe. If given a choice, goldfish and many other omnivores lean towards somewhat meatier foods.
@@kissaquaticsystems5525 oh awesome! Thanks for the recipe 😊
I kept hillstrem loaches about 24pcs n 7 placos. They are great bottom suckers. I've been noticing the behaviour if I manually fed thm food twice a day, they slow down eating all the algie on my decorations, glass and some don't even bother. My advice is if u are a keeper of hillstrem or plakos in a tank without any other fishes, yes u can fed them manually once every day but if in a community tank, its better not to fed manually cuz once they full they slow down cleaning all ur tank algies.
How long does this stay firm in water?
Can't say exactly, my loaches finish them off in a few hours long before they have a chance to break down. They do rip chunks off as they eat them (and then immediately hunt down those chunks). If you're concerned about consistency though feel free to increase the gelatin to food/water ratio, but if you have fry in the tank some breakdown may be a good thing as it gives them a chance to compete for the food.
@@kissaquaticsystems5525 Thank you for getting back with me.
How much water per packet?
For each quarter ounce of gelatin powder I used 1 cup of bottled spring water and 2 cups of ingredients.
It wouldn't float and after I wedged it a rock it melted. Any suggestions to make it hold form?
Und danke für die Möglichkeit der deutschen Untertitel
What kind of loaches are these?
sewellia lineolata
Instead of water, next time add a whole orange (peeled if course).
Be careful, too much garlic fish will suffocate. It's healthy yes, but too much garlic and they begin breathing quickly and reaching for the surface. I learned the hard way had to do a 50% emergency water change. 1 full clove submerged per 15 gallon is or 1/2 clove if minced. Just my experience for tropical fish.
Thanks Sam, that's a lot of garlic! At extremely high concentrations, garlic (allicin is the active ingredient) is problematic for fish, and I'd be wary of going anywhere near that concentration in a fish tank. In this food there are 4 total cloves of garlic spread across ~100 squares. This 40 gallon tank gets 1 square per week, so that's 4% of a single clove of garlic per week. Garlic is often used in fish foods to stimulate feeding- I believe fish are particularly attracted to the smell. There's also a large (but somewhat mixed) body of evidence suggesting that garlic in small concentrations may improve fish size/growth and help with some bacterial/fungal/protozoal parasites.
Hi Yes that's true it's alot of garlic. Initially they seemed to respond well with a 1/4 minced garlic and became very active. I didn't think the one clove would be a big difference. I was wrong. It didn't kill anything in the tank but luckily i responded quick. I initially started with garlic because of what i thought of was icke on cardinal tetras. They were behaving very odd and had a few white spots and small holes in their bodies. I had no choice but to destroy them because they looked like they were suffering. All my other fish were in perfect health.
Ah ok so you were using the garlic as a medication, which explains the high dose. Shame about the cardinals, they're great fish but like many South American tetras they can sometimes be a bit fragile. For ich specifically I've had luck with simple heat treatment- setting the tank in the high 80's F for 2 weeks, but that too isn't without its risks as some fish can struggle at those temps.
What is DIY??
don't place hillstream loaches fish in the tank together with parrot fish, they will easily to be eaten by the predator. Also, the loaches will easily to get stress and die.
why tell everybody at the end not to use tap water should of been said at start you should do updated video on ie tap water and garlic dissapointing , after reading coments ive decided to throw it away with the obvious mistakes
LOL this guy is KISS, but he goes way too long in his commentary