So what do you'll think of my homemade koi/goldfish food?

[Mayank]

OK be nice . This is my first attempt.
We do have some store bought koi food but it has corn like a lot of them do and I was told to try and avoid it by my pond place. So I thought I would come up with a recipe of my own to make food for my little scaly friends. So here went nothing .
I might have forgotten an ingredient or so but I am trying to remember everything I put in. There was broccoli and spinach and strawberries and raspberries and weak term and rolled oats and hemp hearts and carrots four cloves of garlic frozen peas, spirulina and chlorella tablets and a whole sweet potato.

 

[Mayank]

Oh yeah and a bunch of linseed (flax) oil

 

[AlyssaFish]

Would you mind making food for me while you're at it? Not for my fish or anything, just me. XD

 

[Mayank]

Would you mind making food for me while you're at it? Not for my fish or anything, just me. XD

Absolutely. It actually tastes delish! Then I added a little agar agar but it did not set so I baked it and now crumble it on to the water and they love it.

 

[Mmathis]

Looks like when I used to make food for my turtles, with gelatin. They loved it!

 

[AlyssaFish]

Absolutely. It actually tastes delish! Then I added a little agar agar but it did not set so I baked it and now crumble it on to the water and they love it.

That is some legitimate looking fish food! Are those silicon ice cube trays?

 

[Mayank]

They're baking trays. They go right in the oven. 375F.

 

[Mayank]

Update: so the whole baking bit didn't work out too well. One batch was OK cause it was softer (more agar agar in that bit?) but another batch came out really hard and pieces had really sharp edges and I was worried about it hurting the fish even though it does soften in water but they were so aggressively in a feeding frenzy I didn't think they were giving it enough time to soften. So I tried a new technique (I had tons of food from the Vitamix and have enough from one batch for probably the whole season?). I put some of the frozen cubes (I had frozen the rest of the xtra stuff in ice cube trays so I could remove a little bit at a time) on a silicone cookie mat and instead of using the oven, I used the steam oven hoping it would make a packaged polenta consistency type product that would be soft and rubbery but still bind together. It looked like things went south when I stared through the glass but when I took the tray out it seemed perfect! My son cut the flat sheet into nice little squares and the crowd has gone wild ever since!
Here's a video of how much they like it. Only the big silver koi would eat stuff from my hand just a few days ago and now they're all jockeying for a feeding position! Its the highlight of my day; I feed them around 6-7 pm when I get home from work.

 

[Mmathis]

I didn’t bake mine, but used gelatin and let them congeal in the fridge/freezer. They stored well, and were easy for the fish to consume.

 

[Mayank]

I didn’t bake mine, but used gelatin and let them congeal in the fridge/freezer. They stored well, and were easy for the fish to consume.

So... that was the idea with my food and the recipe detailed how to use the agar agar and do exactly that. Well, my wife (in her defense, she is an expert cook) said that that was too much agar and she barely uses an eighth of that amount and obviously that didn't gell up, then we added more and the whole thing was a mess! Anyway, now that I have this new technique I'm super happy and clearly the pisceans are too!
Not sure of how much to feed them, they keep begging for more by making a "gulping for oxygen" style mouth motion with their mouths outside the water (which freaked me out the first time making me think that the oxygen levels plummeted in the pond)!!! The goldfish are the ones doing that, the koi seem pretty chill when I'm done and I say "all gone" and show my hands (like we do with our 14.9 yr old Sibe husky).

 

[BarbO]

I think you did great! And very healthy ingredients for those lucky fish. They are eating better than most people I think.

 

[Mayank]

I think you did great! And very healthy ingredients for those lucky fish. They are eating better than most people I think.

Thank you!