Here is what a beef heart looks like fresh from the butchers. Chances are that you may have to order them.

Beef heart is sometimes available ready cubed, avoid this as any sinew, fat or gristle left on the cubes will not be good for your Discus fish. It is also far easier to remove on large pieces of heart than on small cubes.

To prepare the heart, a decent sharp knife and chopping board will be needed.

Start by slicing the heart in half, then the two halves in to sizable slices of three each. This leaves a reasonable sized piece to work with.

Next start removing all sinew, arteries and fat.

Take your time, it must all be removed leaving lean meat.

Here the cubes are being put through the grinder / sausage maker. Take note, GRINDER! DO NOT use a liquidiser. A liquidiser will blitz the cubes into particles not of uniform size.

This can create problems when it is added to the aquarium. Fine particles will be ignored by the fish and sink to the bottom. If using a substrate, there they will rot, causing bacteria blooms (cloudy water) and ammonia spikes if the filter bacteria cannot handle the load.

The ground meat from the grinder is being collected in a clean bucket. Yes it is fish food, but still pay attention to hygiene.

Here we are making a five heart mix, a large collection vessel makes for less mess.

The heart must be passed through the grinder TWICE.

Here are 1.5kg of FRESH peeled prawns which are draining after being washed. There are no fixed ratios on weights, adjust to you own needs. They can be left out if you like. The prawns are added mainly to improve colouration of the Discus fish. This lot are going into the five heart mix.

Pass the shrimps or prawns through the grinder.

Here are two large tins of spinach which have been drained. Again optional, some Discus keepers may not like to see this in the mix, however our fish eat it.

Pass them though the grinder.

Here are the main ingredients in the collection vessel. The heart cubes have gone through the grinder twice, the spinach and shrimp/ prawns once.

Added to this five heart mix where 10ml of Abidec liquid baby multi vitamins, (pharmacy) one level tablespoon of paprika and 75 grams of Spirulina.

Now we added 125ml of Seachem Garlic Guard. We used to use ground garlic cloves, but this has two distinct disadvantages:
For one raw garlic it stinks the place out when making and feeding the mix.
Two: Occasionally Discus fish will get a lump down it's throat that has escaped the crushing/grinding, resulting in it going a little dark for twenty four hours. The Seachem garlic guard has all the good ingredients of raw garlic, in a liquid form, for a consistent mix, and best of all, the smelly bit is absent! Can be substituted for Kent Marine Garlic Xtreme for those with deeper pockets.

Seachem Entice is especially effective at getting new arrivals feeding.

This was also a medicated mix. 100g of Huey Hung H-6 Tapeworm Fluke Care was added as per the instructions to the five heart mix.

Mix all the ingredients in the bucket thoroughly and pass through the grinder once more. Do not bulk freeze medicated mixes, some medications may loose their effectiveness if not used within a reasonable time schedule.

Omit the Huey Hung H6 for an every day feed mix.

You should now have a nice consistent mix looking as left. You know what as gone in it, you know the water content is very low and your kitchen is a mess!
Any frozen food that floats for a considerable length of time has a high water content. Not good for your pocket, or your fish, you are buying water! This mix will sink within seconds.

At this point you must prepare a binder to stop the mix disintegrating when added to the aquarium. Omit this stage at your peril! Fine particles of heart not bound correctly, floating around the aquarium, will impair water quality and may also cause a bacteria bloom!

Use one 11.7g sachet of gluten free beef gelatine per 1.5kg of mix to bind. The gelatine is available from most supermarkets under the brand name Super Cook. Dissolve in water as per instructions and mix with the beefheart thoroughly.
A superior solution however is to add a bar of Diskusin per heart to act as the binder. If Diskusin is used, the baby vitamins may also be left out.

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All that remains to do now is add the mix to re-sealable bags.

Chef's top tip: After adding the mix to the bag, use a rolling pin to produce a nice thin sheet of beef heart mix around 4 mm thick. This makes it far easier to break off chunks for feeding when removed from the freezer.

Fast freeze the beefheart sheets if you have the facility on your freezer.

IMPORTANT:

After all the hard work, retire for a pint at the local while the other half clears up the mess, or better still, retire for a pint and get them to make it too!