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Who's heard of the European Shrimp Mix?

If you've been on Cichlid-forum, you may have seen it mentioned. Maybe you thought it was some kind of product sold overseas (or locally, depending on what side of the pond you're from! ).

Well it's actually a very nutritious, DIY food formula that many European breeders have been using for years. Ad Konings even recommends it for almost all African Cichlids! (See the link, scroll down the page a little):
http://cichlid-forum.com/articles/food_recipes.php

So upon reading some of the discussions had on this recipe, I decided to try a Mbuna modified version. Modified in that I went lighter on the shrimp, and heavier on the peas proportionally, as recommended by other Mbuna keepers who've used this recipe.

My recipe involves the following ingredients:
1/2 lb - whole shrimp
1 lb - green peas
1 tsp - spirulina powder
56g - Gelatine powder (2 packages of 28g Knox Unflavored Gelatine Powder)
5 drops - Fish liquid multi vitamin


What I did to prepare:
- First, I used a food processor to grind up the shrimp and green peas into a fine paste. Make sure it's good and pastey!

- Next I added the Spirulina and liquid multi vitamin, and mixed this into the shimp-pea paste.

Now for the gelatine phase. This step is for the Knox brand gelatine, so if you use another type this may not work. Check the packaging for instructions.

- Each Knox gelatine box calls for 1 cup cold water, and 3 cups boiling water (actually it says juice, but we don't want juice in our E.S.M.). I had read on cichlid-forum that a few people had difficulty getting the mix to solidify with Knox, so I decided to halve the amount of water. So in total I used just 1 cup cold water and 3 cups boiling water for two packages of gelatine.

- First, put the gelatine powder into the cold water (these instructions are on the gelatine box, btw). Pour the boiling water in, and stir until the powder is disolved.

- Now, place your shrimp/pea/spirulina/vitamin paste into the warm/hot gelatine water. A wire wisk works really well to blend it all together. Make sure you have an even consistency, without lumps.

- Pour your mix into a baking tray. I used one that was approx. 18" X 12", but use whatever works or fits the amount you are making.

- Put tray with mix into the fridge, and let it sit for 3 hours or so.


The result should be a solid greenish, Jello-like concoction. Once solidified, you can cut it up into small cubes and place them in ziplock bags for freezer storage.

To feed, remove a cube and allow it to thaw. My recommendation is to keep a small tuperware container in the refridgerator, and use this to store a few cubes at a time. The frozen cubes should thaw in the fridge overnight, and then you've got a few days worth of food. Break or cut (I prefer to cut them) the cube down into smaller pieces and feed. Your mbuna will love it!


Where to find the ingredients:
Whole Shrimp (with the head) - tough to find in some areas, but check specialty meat markets that sell fresh fish. Supermarkets in the US tend to not have them. If all else fails just use cheap, headless, shrimp.

Green Peas - Frozen food section of the supermarket.

Spirulina Powder - Health food stores and nutrition-oriented places in the mall like Vitamin World or GNC usually has it as well.

Liquid Multi Vitamin - Check your LFS. Kent Zoe Freshwater is one of the liquid vitamin products available for fish.

Knox Unflavored Gelatine (or similar product) - Should be in your supermarket. I found it near the baking supplies and next to the Jello mix.


[span class="edited"][Edited by EdgarFanCLS 2004-08-27 12:54][/span]

[span class="edited"][Edited by AndyCLS 2004-09-03 07:50][/span]

I'll also tack on the disclaimer from cichlid-forum regarding the E.S.M.:

CAUTION: You should never suddenly change your Cichlids' feeding regimen or food. Instead, gradually introduce the new food, observing them carefully in the following days to make sure it sits well with them. Because of the high nutritional value of the shrimp mix, you should not feed it more than once a day.

Edgar, this is fantastic info.
I was not aware of the shrimp mix info until this post.
I will be mixing up a batch for my fronts. See how they enjoy it, I am sure they will.
Once again thanks for this very useful information
Would you mind if I print out your version of the mix.
Thanks.
Tom

Yep, print away. My contribution to the fish world.

This recipe is pretty adaptable from what I've been reading. Fishkeepers have been changing the ingredients to balance it towards the diet of their fish - be it herbivore, omnivore, or carnivore.

Cichlid-forum has a sticky on it as well:
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23920
A few people, including myself, have shared some of their own variations from the original recipe.

Ewww...I think I'd have to buy a new blender after blending shrimp in it!

Thanks for sharing that, I'm sure many mbuna will be made happy as a result!

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. - Oscar Wilde

I use freeze dried shrimp and frozen mysis shrimp very sparingly, not even once a week, for my mbuna's. I also splash the smallest little bit of freeze dried bloodworms in there, despite the general consensus that you shouldn't. This is all in combination with my varied pellet and flake diet, and my parboiled spinach, lettuce, zuccini, cucumber, etc.

All on top of the natural green algae that they love to graze off my DIY artificial rockwall on the back of the tank.

most tropheus breeders in europe use this mix for their tropheus, you shouldn't need to change the ingredients for mbuna.

Josh

you shouldn't need to change the ingredients for mbuna.

The ingredients are the same, but the proportions are different. I see what you're saying though.

There was some question on cichlid-forum whether that much shrimp (the 50/50 mix) was appropriate for mbuna. I went the safe route for my first batch, as most of my concern was for my Acei. A little more green pea certainly isn't going to hurt anything. I kinda wish some people would have piped up over there about feeding the original recipe to their vegetarian fish... unfortunately there seemed to be a lack of participation among the vegetarian keepers in the threads I was reading.

Maybe for my next batch I'll up the amount of shrimp to 1 part to 1 part peas. In the meantime I have quite a bit of ESM to go through before I can make more.

[span class="edited"][Edited by AndyCLS 2004-09-07 10:41][/span]

This is a great recipe, i will defiantly use it on my mbuna.
Thanks for telling us info about it AndyCLS.



[span class="edited"][Edited by PJ 2004-09-08 02:12][/span]