Why Beef Heart.

[chris]

Hello, im just curious to find out what is the attraction with beef heart :?:
Is it a cost thing :?:
Is just really good for em :?:
I prefer the frozen variaty of food.(brine blood worms discus dinner) Just easy :wink:

[Ben]

Chris,
I have wondered the same thing for years!
i think it is like flare jeans, someone came up with the idea and it has stuck forever! no....on a serious note, beef heart is very lean and has the smallest amout of fat out of all the organs.
my self, i rarely feed beef heart as i believe the hearts bought from my local butchers or coles, are not the best quality. You would have read a post by me, "back to beef heart"
I feed live blackworms, mysis shrimp, live and frozen brine shrimp and are expermenting with chopped up live foods like meal worms earth worms and white worms when i can get them.
I need to buy a mincer but i would like to try the recipe from ladyred.
cheers, Ben

[weird]

I don't think anyone feeds 100% beef heat although you can buy it in your LFS. Beefheart is usually a mix, where beefheart is the base ingredient. Discus dinner is a beefheart mix. And as a base ingredient it is incredible cheap, lean and very very high in protein.

[africandiscus]

Cost related. Beef heart costs $2.5/kg

It will cost you less than $15 to make food for at least 4 months.

[ozarowana]

It puts size on fish and not just discus either.

[chris]

Please tell more :?:

[Merrilyn]

Beef heart is a clean, reliable, cheap source of high quality protein. Our discus, being carnivores need a high protein diet for growth. But on it's own, it does not contain the required vitamins and minerals our discus need. So beef heart should only be used as part of a varied diet. I have heard of breeders using lamb heart or turkey heart for the same reason.

[kalebjarrod]

Our discus, being carnivores discus aren't carnivours there omninvores arn't they (eating both meat and veggies)

Beef heart was used as a cheap form of food in the very early years of discus keeping

it was found to put great growth on and be a cheap and easy source of food

it also lead to health problem with lack of trace elements

we now use it as a stable base for a multitude of personal recipes including B/H fish veggies and vitamins :wink:

[Merrilyn]

Hi Ryan, yes, you are right. I should have qualified that statement by saying that discus are PRIMARILY carnivorous. They have a mainly meat diet but do ingest a small amount of vegetable matter.

In their Amazonian homeland, discus feed on small freshwater crustaceans. These crustaceans eat vegetable matter, and so the discus get a small amount of vegetable matter in their diet from the gut of these crustaceans. :wink:

[kalebjarrod]

Discus being mainly meat eaters IMO is a bit of a myth

although the major part of they visable diet is fish, freshwater crustaceans etc this is the part that is easly seen when observing discus in the wild

the amounts of algee they eat must be significant in the wild to produce such wild colours

they also eat loads of minute floating plant material, picking at it all day

this is one of the fundimental problems early discus keepers had to deal with and learn to understand and hence our modern day sucess and mordern day B/H mixes

[Mattzilla]

high in protien and low in fat....that is the basics.


once added with other HIGH QUALITY ingredients it is the base for an excellent complete diet.

you can use pretty much any type of heart but beef is large and cheap

the main thing is once you have trimmed all the fat, about half the heart, it is veeeery low in fat. discus cannot handle animal fat so a prperly trimmed beef heart works wonders

jmho

matt

[africandiscus]

Once more, beef heart is dirt cheap

[chris]

How does (fish fuel)Discus dinner compare to a good quality B/H mix :?:

[goldenpigeon]

BE CAREFUL WITH BEEFHEART!!!!!

when i waz new to discus i had seen these massive discus that i loved and wanted massive ones like them. i went to tha guy at the closest pet store to my house and asked him what to feed the discus to get them massive. (he had discus at the store that were large) so i asked him what to feed them to get them huge. he said that the staple is a beef heart food. he said go to the butcher up the road and just buy a kilo of tha stuff ($5 a kilo). at this time i had been feeding bloodworm and discus dinner, discus dinner is expensive up her in QLD at $5 per packet, i dont know wat it costs else where but for me its allot as i have 15 excellent feeders (they never stop)

of course the guy could get discus dinner cheap as he owned the store and fed his breeders at home on it.

anyway this guy just said take the b/h home and put a little bit of bloodworm with it and mince tha lot up and freeze it in zipper seal baggies.

about 3 months later from feeding this stuff i had 15 at the time skinnnnnnnnnnnyyyyyyyyyyyyyy discus that where very unenerjetic and started dropping off. (i dont have any of these they all died, this is very sad but i managed to get them for $10 ea off a breeder so i hadnt lost that much money but i still felt like i had lost all of my family.)

after this series or unfortunant events i found out that the beef heart tastes good and prettymuch goes in 1 end and out the other to pollute the water. this does not mean that it has no nutritional value but dont go overboard with the stuff.

David

[Merrilyn]

Discus need a balanced diet to thrive, and beefheart (even mixed with a little bloodworm) does not provide all the necessary vitamins and minerals for growth.

It is probably sufficient to maintain adult discus, but wouldn't be good enough to induce them to spawn.

No single food can provide the proper nutrition discus need, so variety is the rule. Always feed a mixture; beefheart, prawns and white fish meat, bloodworms and brine shrimp, along with a small amount of green vegetable matter, and a good quality commercial flake or pellet mix containing added vitamins and minerals.

[goldenpigeon]

yer thanks. this was over almost 3 years ago and since then i have grown up sum great discus

David

[goldenpigeon]

+ have a balanced diet for my discus

David

[funkyfish]

i use b\h i put vita flakes, earthworm flakes,color flakes egg flakes,and a good alround flake in it and they love it . i get atlest a inch growth a month and very active fish

[mistakes r crucial]

I agree with everyone here that says Discus (all fish really) need a balanced and varied diet for premium health, however, I think you will find that most Asian breeders use beefheart as a staple diet because of cost and the massive amount of fish they keep and breed. Roy Khoo for example feeds B/H 3 times a day and blood worm after a water change so he tells me.

There are some great recipes out there for B/H that in my opinion cater for all or most of their needs. I make my own and include B/H, banana, garlic, spirulina, flake, prawns, WA pillies, Pentavite childrens multi vitamins, cereal and gelatin to stick it all together. It's a messy job but one that will save a bucket load of money and you only have to do it 2-3 times a year.

Don't do as I did and use the wifes smoothy maker to mince it all up, I still have the physical and mental scars to prove it was the wrong move!
MAC

[nicholas76]

I have often seen cows roam the amazon havent you :roll:


beef heart is high in protein, contains less veins and fat which discus cant digest properly and its dirt cheap.


hehe Mak i once used the blender and not a proper mincer! LOl

a few hundred dollars later ( to replace the broken blender ) i now have a mincer. :lol:

[nicholas76]

oh and also


that why we dont use beef heart as one food source!! as it causes blockage more so than other foods.

secondly thats why you should add lecithin to any beef heart mix! it helps in digestion/ blood flow and the nervous system.