The Fishroom Library Archives ---
The Fishroom Library Archives ---Articles on Foods (live and otherwise) and Feeding Killifish (2001-2005)
An archived collection of articles, tips, and information about tropical fishkeeping in general, and killi-keeping in particular, from past issues of the G.C.K.A. Newsletter. To read an article, please click on the title (in blue).
All material is copyright © G.C.K.A. or the authors, unless otherwise noted. Reproduction is permitted for non-commercial purposes only (i.e., club bulletins). We do request that you provide source credit, and send us a copy of the publication in which the article appears. Please forward to G.C.K.A., c/o Recktenwalt, 4337 Ridgepath Drive, Dayton, OH 45424.
Another Fish Food Recipe - primarily
vegetarian
Another Gelatin Recipe - Paste Foods, Revisited
Another
Live Food - Crickets
Blackworms
- more than you ever wanted to know, from Charles Nunziata.
Decapsulating Brine Shrimp Eggs
Enriching Brine Shrimp nauplii
Raising Adult Brine Shrimp
Confused
Flour Beetles - revisited.
Can
You Overwinter Daphnia?
Feeding
Daphnia - from the fishroom, and from the kitchen.
How I Raise Daphnia - Bill Childers' method.
Raising
Daphnia - one man's method.
Raising
Daphnia - by the pound! How Milward Lavin did it in 1931.
Raising Daphnia - Bill Childers' method.
Earthworms as Fish
Food.
Easy Keepers - use a food slurry for raising fry
Feeding Our Fish
A Couple of Recipes for Frozen Fish
Food - two recipes to try.
Fruit
Flies - revisited, according to Cal Hin.
Another Method for Fruit Flies - Tom Cook's technique
Garlic is more than Seasoning
Culturing
Greenwater - additional techniques.
Grindal Worms - an old standby.
What is Infusoria?
Live Foods - an overview by several experienced
aquarists
Homemade Paste Fish Food - another variation
Raising Worms on Foam - An additional method for grindals
Rotifers
101 - a beginner's guide.
A Supplemental Fry Food
- Resting Rotifers
Springtails - another possible live food.
What Do You Feed Your Worms?
Looking for a basically vegetable recipe for fish food? Consider this one, which uses primarily vegetable ingredients (organic vegetables preferred).
3 cups cooked oatmeal
1 med. steamed Idaho potato
1 med. steamed Sweet Potato (or Yam)
1 head steamed Romaine lettuce (all parts)
1/2 lb. steamed (frozen) green peas
1/2 lb. steamed (frozen) green beans
1/4 jar. wheat germ
1 lb. steamed Codfish
1/2 steamed red bell pepper (without seeds)
16 individual packets Knox gelatin (about 4 boxes)
2-3 cups boiling water
Steam ingredients, then mix in a blender (use juice from steam
for blending) until you get a thick mush. Dissolve gelatin in 2-3 cups boiling
water, then mix into vegetable mixture. Freeze until just firm, then slice into
convenient sized chunks for feeding. Freeze solid.
-- G.C.K.A. Newsletter - October 2003
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Another Gelatin Recipe …
Paste Foods, Revisited
Many killikeepers like to make their own
foods, often using one of the readily available "paste" recipes. The
following comes from John Hoernig (thanks to the electronic killietalk
mailing list).
John learned the original recipe from his
local aquarium club, Singing Sands Aquarium Society in Michigan City, Indiana,
and modified the original recipe/method to save time in preparation and cleanup.
Ingredients
Baby food (in jars) – Buy types to suit the types of fish you are feeding. Peas, squash, complete meals, etc.
Knox Gelatin (in packets) – This is the binder and also an important food. Add about 1/2 the water the packet instructs. The liquid in the baby foods will provide the additional liquid. If using dry ingredients, you may need to add more water.
Multi Vitamins – Optional. John uses a generic but fresh multi-vitamin, crushed into a powder using a mortar and pestle.
Anything else you want to add – Chopped frozen spinach, beef hearts, turkey hearts, chicken hearts, etc. John says he doesn’t bother to do this, since there are plenty of baby foods available to fill any dietary requirement.
Preparation Method
Place all ingredients (except vitamins) in
a microwave-safe Ziploc bag and mix thoroughly. Microwave until hot (the gelatin
doesn’t need to cook, only to get hot). Mix in the vitamin powder.
Lay the bag out on a cookie sheet and
freeze.
Feeding
Using a cheese grater, shred the amount of
food you need into a bowl. You can feed this shredded material directly with
your fingers. Or you can add water, then rinse through a net (save the rinse
water) and place the resulting "goop" in a clean squeeze bottle (a
small catsup bottle works well) for delivery.
If you’re feeding small fish, drain the
rinse water through a brine shrimp net to recover the smaller pieces, then drain
and feed the same way.
-- G.C.K.A. Newsletter, April 2002
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Crickets make good critter (and killifish)
food, especially pinhead (baby) crickets.
You can buy fairly well grown or adult
crickets (dearly) at your local pet store. Or you can (fairly cheaply) grow your
own, with minimal time and using minimal resources.
Mach Fukada, from Hawaii, reports that
he has cultured crickets by collecting local insects, then placing them into a 5
gallon plastic bucket with about 3-4 inches of sand on the bottom. He fed them
cabbage, dog food and rabbit food.
"I would place a bunch of scrunched up
newspaper into the bucket to serve as a refugium for the pinhead crickets,"
he says. "When I needed to harvest them I would just shake the newspaper
into another bucket ... and aspirate all that I needed." His cricket
hatchery was covered by windowscreen, held in place with Bungee cord.
In his article "Crickets as Killie
Food," Jim Robinson of the Canadian Killifish Association outlines another
method. You will need, he says:
2 - new 10
gallon fish tanks
cellophane tape
3 - large
Kritter Keepers
5 - plastic
glasses
2 - clamp-on
lights
2 - 100w light
bulbs
margarine
containers with lids
10 - shallow
containers
egg cartons
used peat moss
net for
squeezing out the peat moss
paper towels
starter
crickets
First, determine your how many crickets you will need. You should plan to produce slightly more crickets than that, so you can grow a few from each batch to serve as breeders for the next generation. Each female will produce 10-20 eggs per day. Conservatively, 10 females will produce about 700 eggs per week, resulting in newly hatched crickets about the size of a fruit fly.
The Initial Setup
Take a new 10-gallon tank and put a strip
of cellophane tape from top to bottom on the inside in each corner, smooth side
out. (Crickets can’t climb glass, but they can climb silicone sealant or
scratches in the glass.)
Place the egg cartons at one end of the
tank (hiding place for the breeders). Attach the clamp-on light about 10"
above them.
Place a shallow container in the tank and
cover with food. Make a continuous water supply by folding 2 paper towels to fit
inside another shallow container. Fill a plastic glass full of water, place the
lid with the paper towels over the top of the glass and invert quickly; place in
the aquarium.
For the breeding medium, wash used peat
thoroughly with hot water, then squeeze until very little water is dripping.
Place this in another container and put in the tank.
Add your starter crickets. These can come
from a live food supplier, your local pet store, or your own back yard. The
species is less important than the fact you have crickets to work with.
Regular Maintenance
After several days, remove the
used peat and replace.
Add a thin layer of damp peat on top of the
used peat (to replace some of the lost moisture). Cover the container with a lid
and mark with the hatching due date. Hatching time is dependent on temperature;
at 80ºF incubation for commercial strain feeder crickets is about 12 days.
When the eggs are due to hatch, remove the
lid and place the peat container into a Kritter Keeper that has been supplied
with food and water. By keeping the hatchlings unlighted (cooler) they grow more
slowly and can be fed to the fish for a longer period. Jim keeps about 4 spawns
of crickets in one container for about three weeks.
Any young crickets left over after that
time are placed into another prepared 10 gallon tank and allowed to grow up as
breeders. At 6-8 weeks old, these young crickets are moved into the original
breeding setup and the cycle continues. If the colony fails, you can always
start up again with new crickets.
What do you feed your crickets? Commercial
producers use a variety of specialty foods to enhance growth rates and foster
better, more productive breeders, but crickets seem to do just fine on more
ordinary fare. "One of the best things you can feed your crickets is flake
food," says Scott McLaughlin. "Use the highest protein content you can
... and this will ‘gut load’ the crickets, allegedly passing on the
nutrition to the fish."
The Downside of Raising Crickets
Alas, no live food is perfect.
If you can only spend minimal time in your
fishroom, crickets may not be for you. If you have a small house, or a house
without a basement, or if you have family members who are averse to the
occasional loose "bug," crickets may not be for you. But if you have
the space, and the inclination, they can provide an excellent live food for your
killifish.
-- G.C.K.A. Newsletter, April 2002
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More than you ever wanted to know about
Blackworms
Tubifex worms have long been known in the killifish hobby as
an "egg-building" food, but they have a downside: they often carry a
number of fish pathogens, resulting in unexpected outbreaks of disease in
breeders’ tanks.
The Carolina
Blackworm, an aquatic relative of the earthworm,
is a clean and easily handled alternative to tubifex. Hardy, nutritious and
inexpensive, they come from clean water sources, and carry no potential
pathogens.
Under the proper conditions, blackworms can be kept for
significant periods of time without trouble, and may even increase their numbers
by segmentation and growth of the fragments. Storage for blackworms is fairly
straightforward: use shallow refrigerated trays. Keep the worms wet, just
covered in water. You can add a layer of wet newspaper or paper towels if you
like. Once daily, rinse the worms twice. If you cover the storage tray, be sure
it is not airtight.
Feeding blackworms to your fish can be a challenge, since they
swim freely. Once in the aquarium, they will live indefinitely, actively
scavenging on debris and hiding where fish often cannot reach them. Try using a
shallow glass dessert dish to give the fish a better chance at them. "After
the second rinsing," says Charlie Nunziata, "I pick up the worms with
a turkey baster… then slowly insert the baster into the aquarium to just above
the dessert cup." Gently squeezing the bulb of the baster pushes out a
quantity of worms, which sink into the container. Larger fish may throw worms
out of the container while feeding, and some worms will usually manage to
escape. Just retrieve them with the turkey baster.
Almost all killies will feed heavily on
blackworms, but young
Nothos and Fundulopanchax may occasionally overeat to excess, resulting
in loss of the fish. As good as they are as killifish food, blackworms are a bit
large for some species, and may need to be chopped up for feeding.
One caveat: Blackworms are extremely sensitive to salt. If you use salt in your tanks, watch blackworms carefully when feeding, to prevent a mass die-off that will foul the tank.
Reference: Nunziata, Charlie. "Blackworms:
A Great Food," Suncoast Killifish Society Newsletter, Volume 5, Issue 2.
– G.C.K.A. Newsletter, June 2005
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Decapsulating Brine Shrimp Eggs
Hatching brine shrimp eggs can be a messy, time-consuming
business. In the last few years, fishkeepers have discovered that decapsulating
brine shrimp eggs eliminates the mess of floating shells and allows for quicker
hatching and for the use of cysts that would not hatch at all.
Here’s how Ralph Tepedino does it.
"A number of years ago I used this method to try to hatch
eggs that I had from 14 years prior. The outer shell came off ok, and they were
a nice color, but they just wouldn’t hatch in brine solution," Ralph
says.
Since then, we’ve learned that many fish will eat these
unhatched, decapsulated cysts anyway. They simply have to learn that those
little orange specks are food, even though they don’t move in the water
column.
– G.C.K.A. Newsletter, March 2004
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Confused Flour Beetles are one of
the simplest live foods to culture, and both larvae and adults make good food
for fish. In a shallow covered
container pour an inch or so of wheat flour (some add powdered milk). Add the
adult beetles and a small piece of apple or potato for moisture. To remove
beetles and larvae for feeding, sift the flour with a strainer. Always retain a
few adults to continue the culture, and be sure to change part of media
occasionally to keep the culture fresh. Always keep the culture covered –
these beetles will escape if they can and get into your foodstuffs.
Greenwater is a blessing,
or a curse, depending on your point of view. To fishkeepers who want to maintain
a pristine, clear tank, greenwater can be a real problem. To those who are
trying to culture greenwater to feed fry or a daphnia colony, greenwater is a
valued commodity. Many aquarists feel that tanks devoted to greenwater
production are not "lost space," but do double duty: they offer a
space to start fry off well, to condition breeding females, or to offer respite
for battered males. If you’re removing greenwater regularly, you’re also
doing regular water changes, which benefit any fish that may be present.
Greenwater, whether
desirable or not, flourishes when there is an overabundance of light and an
excess of nutrients.
There is no "one
way" to culture greenwater. Sometimes its occurrence is serendipitous.
Other times, the aquarist has to "encourage" its development.
The easiest way to
culture greenwater is to put several feeder goldfish in a 10 gallon tank, feed
well several times a day, and leave the light on all the time. This will result
in a "pea soup" mixture of various micro-critters and algae.
You can also start with
"change water" from your tanks, left under a day-long light source. To
it add any of the following:
The above
"recipes" will produce greenwater with "mixed" colonies,
especially if they are kept outside. These may yield, in addition to greenwater
and various microfauna, mosquito larvae, ostracods, cyclops, and daphnia. These
can be harvested by straining the greenwater through a fine mesh net and rinsing
off the result. Be certain to feed metamorphosing mosquito larvae (they look
like hard "commas") to eager big fish, otherwise they will hatch out
into mosquitoes! This can be disruptive to serene home life!
You may wish to raise
"pure" cultures. These should be started with a clean gallon jar of
conditioned, dechlorinated water placed under strong light. Once the green
culture has begun, you may want to add some slow aeration.
For Euglena–add
several rabbit food pellets and a small piece or two of dried lettuce. Add a
slow flowing airstone. Give continuous light. Remove some green water to feed,
replenish with new water, and add a few rabbit pellets once in a while to keep
the culture deep green.
For Paramecium–start
with a few rabbit pellets. Add the pure paramecium culture. In a few days the
culture will smell like a pond and will have clouds of little "bugs"
near the surface. Scoop them out and feed.
– G.C.K.A.
Newsletter, June 2003
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How I Do It ...
Raising Daphnia
Daphnia is fairly easy to culture, but there seem to be as
many different successful methods as there are aquarists.
"My suggestion," says Harry Kuhman, "is to
split [your starter culture] ... into as many containers as you can. I put my
starter in several one gallon jars on a windowsill and a fishless plant tank.
Use aged water from as many different sources as you can, green water if you
have it. This step is to keep the culture from dying out, as it sometimes will
without apparent reason.
"Next set up some large containers for growing the
critters." Harry uses 30 gallon plastic trash cans as well as 5 gallon
buckets. Do whatever is necessary to dechlorinate your water; well water, pond
water, tank water, etc. are usually no problem. "Introduce a small amount
of the daphnia to each container. If you don’t have green water you’ll need
to feed the critters. My recommended first food is baker’s yeast. If you have
the refrigerated cakes of yeast, just break off a little, dissolve it in a small
amount of water, and add to the container." For dry yeast, put some in a
cup, add 1/4 to 1/2 tsp. sugar, fill with warm water and wait until the mixture
froths, then feed a little to each container.
"Many other items can be used to feed as well. I
sometimes put some lettuce in the blender and turn it into a nice green
soup." Try different things in different containers. Even when something
works well, avoid feeding it to all the containers; sometimes it takes days for
the full (not always good) effect to be seen.
For a few weeks you’ll likely have only modest amounts of
daphnia, but they should begin to propagate. Continue to introduce them into
containers that don’t seem to be doing much. After a while you should notice
large numbers in the containers, eventually even a "bloom," a heavy
cloud of daphnia. "It’s particularly important to harvest when you get a
bloom," Harvey says, "usually shortly after feeding them, as they can
overcrowd the container."
Raising daphnia "really doesn’t take much effort,"
he says. During the warm months you may even find a bonus in the culture in the
form of mosquito larvae. "I encourage this in some [containers],"
Harry says. "The fish like the mosquito larvae even more than
daphnia."
And we all know how our fish just love live foods!
-- G.C.K.A. Newsletter, November 2001
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Of course, say several fishkeepers who have been raising
daphnia for years.
"I had a culture of Daphnia in upstate New York, outside
in a 300 gallon stock tank," says Barry Cooper. "I rarely fed it
anything, except very occasionally some yeast… They over-wintered for about 4
years before I moved to Oregon. That stock tank regularly froze solid. It had
lots of dead leaves and other detritus on the bottom, which I think harbored the
organisms that the daphnia fed on." Barry also over-wintered D. magma
and D. moina in Oregon, where the water froze over in his stock tanks.
Patrick Coleman reports that he when he lived in
"primitive" conditions in Montana, he kept an old wooden water trough
for infusoria and native daphnia. In the spring, it always seemed to bloom back
to the abundance of the previous summers, despite the cold. "The addition
of elk, deer and bear droppings ... added occasionally, helped it even
more."
"I just [leave] the container outside," says Al
Boatman (Florida). "When it warms up after a cold snap I can see the
daphnia swimming along the top of the water."
You can siphon out the bottom debris, place it in a gallon jar
or a 10 gallon tank and warm it to about 78ºF, with about 14 hours of light a
day. This triggers the eggs into hatching. The addition of small amounts of
organic fertilizer (in the form of animal droppings or traces of Miracle-Grow)
encourage a good bloom of green water and bacteria on which the daphnia feed.
– G.C.K.A. Newsletter, December 2002
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Raising Daphnia … by the pound(?!)
"Much ridiculous nonsense has been written
about raising daphnia," Milward Lavin wrote back in 1931. More than 70
years later, his statement is still true.
Bacteria culture
To one gallon of water, add 5 beef bouillon cubes or
5 level teaspoons of beef extract. Boil the mixture for five minutes and
allow to cool, then dissolve in it a level teaspoon of lye
(sodium hydroxide). Be sure to use only a level teaspoon. Keep the solution in a
dark place, open and uncovered, adding replacement water as required until you
begin to use the culture. The culture will grow at 65-76° F, but will grow best
at 98° F.
For the Daphnia
Get another tub, a big one. Fill with
water and add water plants or an airstone to supply oxygen. Place a few daphnia
in the tub. Every two days use your fine mesh net to skim the infusoria culture
and feed it to the daphnia. You should soon have a healthy colony of daphnia.
"Live foods," says Bill Childers, "can provide that extra boost that moves you from ‘keeping them alive’ toward ‘enticing them to breed’." This is a major distinction between the casual fishkeeper and the aquarist who wants to successfully breed his fish and raise healthy fry.
Feeding
Bill feeds his daphnia the following: Mix one package active dry years with
one cup soy flour. Once or twice a day stir 1/4 tsp. of this mixture into 1 cup
warm water. Pour into the daphnia tank; it will turn cloudy. When the water is
clear again, feed the culture again. Overfeeding will cause the culture to crash
(die); experience will teach you how much to feed.
"I also keep some large ramshorn snails in the tank, which I feed a
lettuce leaf once or twice a week. The snails produce infusoria, which is more
food for the daphnia. If you must be gone for a few days, just throw in a couple
of lettuce leaves and the bugs won’t starve while you are gone. The snails are
also a good indicator of water quality." When the water is really bad the
snails will all go to the top
Harvesting
"Never harvest by just netting out the daphnia. Instead, siphon them
into a bucket through a shrimp net, refilling the tank with clean water. The
quantity of water to remove depends on the size of your daphnia tank."
About every 10 days, siphon the mulm from the bottom.
You can sort the daphnia by size by pouring them through fish nets of
different sizes.
Reference: Childers, Bill. "Raising Daphnia." Finsanati, newsletter of the Greater Cincinnati Aquarium Society, March-April 1998.
-- G.C.K.A. Newsletter, November 2004 Return to top of page
Part I – From the Fishroom and other places
Daphnia are a staple food for fish, and one that can be
fairly easily cultured by the amateur aquarist, given sufficient space, light,
and adequate feeding.
But careful feeding of daphnia is almost an
art form.
What to feed these little crustaceans?
There are almost as many answers as there are aquarists raising them. Among the
many possibilities from the fishroom:
Algal and Plankton Cultures
"The key to keeping these [daphnia] cultures going is to
feed them every other day with a small quantity of algal culture. Just enough
algae is poured into each container to turn the water a light cloudy
green," says Eric Lund.
Biological supply houses sell cultures with
instructions for raising daphnia with Euglena and other types of green plankton.
However, for raising mass quantities in-house, they use brewer’s yeast.
Euglena is safer because it doesn’t use up as much oxygen, but it doesn’t
produce the same density or quantity of daphnia.
Green Water
Green water is a great food for
daphnia, living and even multiplying until consumed. It is cheap, easily
cultured, and hard to overfeed.
"I produce green water in quart jars
using soft water with a very small pinch of Miracle Gro and a similar amount of
table sugar added," says Eric Lund. "To get things going I seed the
jars with a cloudy light green water that looks a lot like the contents of a
severely neglected fish tank. I add a bit of this water to my culture tanks
every couple of days when the water in the cultures appears to be
clearing."
"Green water, or bright sunlight
combined with fertilizer (urea or dung) is one of the best (and most natural)
foods," points out Karl Johnsen. "You can also use prepared Liquifry
foods (mostly made of pureed peas and trace elements)."
"The best I’ve done with greenwater
production was when I bubbled CO2 into the water with an airstone, says David
Webb. "My water is transparent, but green. The daphnia seem to have plenty
to eat, and I’m always harvesting spirogyra out of the tank as well. A little
spirogyra with daphnia caught in it is lots of fun for some fish."
Other Possibilities
"Other things I’ve added [to my
daphnia tanks] in the past," says David Webb, "include fertilizer
tablets of the type not recommended by people on the aquatic plants list
(because they cause algae outbreaks). I’ve read that Miracle Gro is another
good choice, and I’ve also added ammonium sulfate and potassium chlorate
directly to the tank in tiny quantities. I’ve also had pleasing results with
1/2-1/4 bag of composted cattle manure from the garden center per 30 gallons of
culture water. Well composted horse manure works well too."
"I raise daphnia fairly successfully
in the non-winter months in a 300 gal. Stock tank that I keep in my (very large)
back yard," Barry Cooper said at one point. "I add a little soluble
fertilizer to encourage the growth of microalgae. The harvestable quantity
varies as the population fluctuates. I harvest them about once or twice a
week."
A research group studying the effects of
barley straw on algal growth in a series of man-made ponds "gave me a
daphnia supply all year long – I could collect in three minutes more daphnia
than I could get home alive," says Julian Haffegee. "I continually
noticed a variation in color and quantity of daphnia, with pools with clear
barleyed water giving the reddest and most abundant, and green opaque water
giving just a few, often colorless."
"Snails and Daphnia go together hand
in hand (symbiotic relationships)," Karl Johnsen reminds. "The snails’
waste is good food for daphnia food creatures like rotifers. Starved daphnia do
not provide good nutrition for fish. Daphnia fed an hour prior to feeding do.
Best to think of Crustacea as ‘grocery sacks’ that need to be filled with
food to be of use in killie-culture."
-- GCKA Newsletter, April 2003
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Feeding Daphnia
Daphnia are a staple food for fish, one that can be cultured
by the amateur aquarist, given sufficient space, light, and adequate feeding.
But what to feed these little crustaceans? Successful feeding
of daphnia is almost an art form, and there are almost as many methods as there
are aquarists raising them.
Among the many possibilities:
From the Kitchen –
Dog Kibble – One aquarist’s
trick is dry dog kibble, at the rate of about 1 kibble per week, give or take a
few days. The kibble sinks and covers the bottom as it dissolves. The snails
grow at an amazing rate. The daphnia grow rapidly and are all bright red.
Flour and Soy – "I currently
raise daphnia in a little plastic box (less than 2 gal.)," says Andrea
Caiola. "I use tap water [and] … feed them with oat flour, just about
1/10 of a tsp. every 2-3 days. I change 50% of the water every month."
WestSoy Soy Milk – is
prepared soy milk in solution. Ingredients are water, soybean meal, and rice
bran syrup. Because it’s in solution, when poured into the tank it mixes with
the water without forming sediment. You can judge how much food is available to
the daphnia by cloudiness of the water.
Soy Flour Recipe – Take one
cup of water from the Daphnia tank and put in a blender. Add one multivitamin, 2
tsp. Soy Flour and 1/2 tsp. Spirulina. Blend for 2 minutes. Refrigerate
up to one week. To feed: Take a little stock solution and add it to a pint
bottle; fill with water from daphnia tank and add a small pinch of yeast. Cover,
shake, let sit for 20 min. Shake again. Add to daphnia culture until water is
just cloudy.
Kitchen Scraps, Lettuce
Yeast/Lettuce Recipe (from John George): 1 gallon clear
plastic bottle, 2 tsp. Sugar, 1/4 to 1/3 of a 1/4 pkt. (7g) Fleischmann’s
RapidRise yeast; chopped up lettuce to cover surface (add more lettuce as it
decomposes). Cover container in the sun. Keep outside. "It seems to be very
rich, so I’m only adding a couple of ounces at one time; not enough to begin
to cloud the water."
"I sometimes put lettuce or vegetable scraps in the
blender and turn it into a nice green soup," reports Harry Kuhman.
"The best suggestion I can give … is to try different things....
Sometimes it takes a few days for the full effect [of a new food] to be
seen."
Pea Soup Mix – Jim Langhammer at
the Belle Isle Aquarium in Detroit supposedly fed his daphnia commercial pea
soup mix 10 parts and Spanish paprika 1 part. Another variation is frozen peas,
with a smaller part of carrots, or beets, or spinach, or sweet potato, or
broccoli blended with vitamins until liquified.
Some aquarists feed pureed sweet potato alone.
Yeast Recipes
Most aquarists agree, yeast is a good food for daphnia, but
the line between using too much and too little is very fine and difficult to
manage, so use caution. Yeast does not emulsify well and often much ends up on
the bottom of the tank, to rot or be eaten by the snails; the daphnia culture
then blossoms, and the water clears. But the next day bacteria have taken over
and destroyed the daphnia.
Dry bakers yeast should be soaked in a small amount of water
for a few minutes to dissolve, or run through a blender, then enough fed to
barely see the bottom of the container. The water should become clear again in
24 hours. Harvest the daphnia, then feed again. Some spirulina can also be added
to the daphnia water a few hours before harvesting. This makes daphnia more
nutritious and rich in vitamins.
Sprinkling powdered milk to slightly cloud the culture water
works better than using yeast, reports one killikeeper, but don’t overfeed
powered milk. The odor is best not described.
"I keep daphnia as a culture," says Tom Grady. He
uses rainwater (filtered for a couple of days through charcoal first) in a ten
gallon tank, introduces the daphnia to the tank and feeds them yeast (1/8 tsp.
of Fleishman’s RapidRise Yeast). He pours a small amount into the tank until
the tank is just slightly cloudy. You have to wait for the tank to be completely
clear before adding more.
-- G.C.K.A. Newsletter, May 2003
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The lowly earthworm is
one of nature’s wonders. It lives underground, converts debris to rich soil,
and multiples readily. Most of us don’t think of earthworms very much unless
we’re looking for fish bait, but as fishkeepers, we know that earthworms are
an excellent, highly nutritious, food source.
Earthworms can be fed to
fish of all sizes. Larger fish such as adult Blue Gularis will readily take
small or coarsely chopped worms. Smaller fish can be fed on finely chopped
worms. Fry can take earthworms that have been pureed to a fine slurry in a
blender.
You can purchase worms
from a bait store, harvest them from your own backyard, or grow your own in a
worm bin or compost pile. For those who garden and compost kitchen waste, worms
serve a dual purpose. "A pound of worms will process a pound of garbage a
day," says Mary Appelhof, who has based a successful business on promoting
and distributing earthworms. Feeding on debris and garbage, worms turn waste
into rich, clean "castings" that are ideal as a growing medium or soil
additive.
Perhaps the best worms
for home composting or live food culturing are red wrigglers (Lumbricus
rebellus) or brandling worms (Eisenia fetida). Both are fairly small
(3" or so), multiply readily, and do well in a temperature range of
40-90ºF, reproducing more at 60-70ºF.
Raising Your Own Worms
You’ll need a covered
box, of wood, plastic, or Styrofoam. Drill two or more holes at the bottom of
the box front, then on the inside firmly attach pieces of fine plastic
screen to cover the holes. This allows drainage, but contains the worms.
Fill the container with
peat moss. Soak it completely and stir to assure uniform wetness.
Locate the box in a
convenient cool, shaded location and place on six bricks – one at each front
corner, and two at the back corners, to allow for drainage. If you like, place a
pan under the drainage holes to catch runoff water (this is great for plants).
Put your starter culture
of worms in the box. Sprinkle a light layer of corn meal on top of the peat
moss. This is all the worms will need, but you can add kitchen trimmings and
fruit waste for food as well. Before feeding, use a tined garden tool to stir up
the peat moss and food left from the previous feeding. Keep the lid closed.
Worms like it dark.
In about a month, you
should have a well established worm culture, with worms ranging from tiny to
fully adult.
The peat moss must be
kept damp. Moisten it regularly. Don’t allow it to dry out (the worms will
die), but don’t overwater. Don’t allow the box to freeze, or to sit out in
the sun. The worms will die.
If a worm culture is
working properly, it will not smell, and can be safely kept inside, in a cool
closet, or in a cool spot in the garage. If the soil fouls, the culture can be
divided and renewed.
Starter worms can be
purchased from your local bait and tackle shop (3-4 containers of red worms), or
from worm suppliers. "Breeder worms" are selected for size, and will
get a new culture started quickly. "Bedrun" worms are mixed sizes but
will work equally well.
Box size? The
"ideal" size, according to Mary’s article in Organic Gardening (January
1992) should be about 1 foot deep, 2 feet wide, and 3 feet long. She recommends
a finely screened lid to keep out fruitflies and other pests and nuisances.
– G.C.K.A. Newsletter, June 2003
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"I would like to report on the success I am having with a
new food mix combined with a tank setup that is producing loads of fry without
picking eggs, etc." Monty Lehman wrote in a recent post to Killietalk.
He started with a 10-gallon tank containing seasoned water of
less than 30ppm hardness, and a box filter weighed down with marbles and filled
with filter floss. He then added two Jiffy 7 peat pellets, a clump of Java Moss,
and a layer of floating plants (Salvinia or Water Sprite). After a day,
he added a young pair of Aphyosemions.
The fish were fed a slurry containing: Frozen Hikari brand
bloodworms, thawed and rinsed; freshly hatched baby brine shrimp; and small
amounts of Golden Pearls fish food, very small crumbled food, and freeze-dried
Cyclop-eeze. He stirs the mixture, then uses a turkey baster to "feed the
slurry mix to all of my tanks once a day."
Monty changes 70% of the water after 5 days, to keep it from
becoming too acid, then again after 10 days. In a couple of weeks he finds that
he has to put a nylon stocking over the end of the drainage hose to "keep
from sucking up the many fry that have started to appear!"
Every tank he has set up this way has produced large amounts
of fry. He’s used the method with a number of Aphyosemion and Fundulopanchax
species, among others. "It’s very efficient at producing large numbers of
healthy and great looking adults," he says, and "feeds fry even when
you don’t see them!"
– G.C.K.A. Newsletter, March 2006
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As aquarists, we
know that feeding our fish a variety of quality foods is important, and we have
developed a good feel for how much to feed at any given time.
To be healthy,
fish require appropriate conditions (water, temperature, appropriate tank size,
compatible companions), light, and food. Since an aquarium is an unnatural
situation, the aquarist must also be observant, to see that all the fish are
eating, not just the bolder individuals. If fish receive too little food or food
inadequate to their nutritional needs, they will merely survive at the expense
of good color, vitality, and reproduction.
Feeding fish is
more than just dropping a pinch of dry food into the tank once or twice a day.
For fish to be healthy and show their best colors, they require a diet that
fulfills all their basic nutritional needs. If we want the fish to be well
nourished, we need to understand their needs and requirements and feed them good
food.
Like humans,
fish require a diet containing a balanced mix of fats, carbohydrates, protein,
vitamins, and minerals. If so inclined, the aquarist can make quality fish foods
at home, using fresh or frozen ingredients and already proven formulae. However,
most commercially available dry and flake foods meet basic piscine requirements
and form a good basis for their diet. Lee Harper has used ground Purina Trout
Chow as the basis for his fish feeding regimen for years. However, even for fish
that are not being stressed by breeding, it’s a good idea to use a variety of
formulations in addition to the occasional live foods, to provide variety.
How Much and How Often to Feed?
In nature,
fish feed continually. In the aquarium, the aquarist controls the feeding cycle
not only by the selection of foods, but by the choice of feeding times.
Most aquarists
recommend feeding at least twice a day, with more frequent feedings for fry.
With dry foods, feed as much as the fish will clean up in about five minutes;
after that, most foods will begin to pollute the water. Some live foods, such as
daphnia, glassworms, mosquito larvae, and bloodworms, may be left in the tank
with the fish for "snacking" later. Tubifex worms may burrow into the
substrate, out of reach of the fish. If not eaten in a day or two, mosquito
larvae may reach their adult form; be forewarned that for them, the aquarist may
make a good meal!
If you choose
to feed only once a day, morning is preferable. In well planted aquaria or those
with green water, chlorophyll in the plants generates oxygen (O2) in
the presence of light and releases carbon dioxide (CO2)
when dark. Fish require extra oxygen in order to aid digestion. Feeding early in
the day assures that plenty of oxygen is available, particularly in aquaria with
heavy fish loads. In aquaria with less fish, the actual feeding times are less
critical.
Feeding Breeding Fish
Breeding
fish are under greater nutritional stress than are fish merely maintained in an
aquarium. In addition to meeting their own basic nutritional needs, they must
also develop strong eggs and sperm, and have sufficient energy for courting and
spawning. For breeding fish, the addition of live foods is highly recommended.
However, observation by aquarists have shown that some live foods are more
beneficial than others.
Brine
Shrimp: Newly hatched brine shrimp nauplii are an excellent food for any
killifish, from those newly hatched fry large enough to take them, up to
breeding adults. However, egg production by adults fed solely on brine shrimp
nauplii has often been minimal. Adult live or frozen brine shrimp are also good,
although some loss of nutrition occurs during the thawing process.
Worms (earthworms,
bloodworms, tubifex worms, whiteworms, etc.): Feeding worms has long been known
to increase egg production in breeding fish. Earthworms, tubifex worms,
glassworms, and whiteworms are particularly good, as are fresh or frozen
bloodworms. Black- and tubifex worms have a dubious reputation, and should be
used with care.
Mosquito
Larvae: When available, this is probably one of the best possible live
foods for any killifish.
Daphnia:
When used with brine shrimp, daphnia can increase egg production, but not to the
extent that tubifex will.
References: Speice, Paul. "Guppies to Groupers," Freshwater and
Marine Aquarium, January 1986.
--G. C. K. A. Newsletter, July
1998
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Foods …
Enriching Brine Shrimp nauplii
There has been much discussion recently about enriching baby
brine shrimp (BBS, or nauplii) to enhance their nutritional value. As
they grow, much of a brine shrimp’s body mass converts to chitin, which is
indigestible to fish. Feeding the nauplii increases their nutritional
value.
Brine shrimp are filter feeders and will eat almost anything,
however newly hatched nauplii have no mouths for the first couple of
molts, so feeding them right after hatching does little good. Enrich about 24
hours after hatching, then feed to your fish within 48 hours of hatching.
Brine shrimp nauplii reach the instar 2 stage (when
they can begin to feed) about 6 hours after hatching, with nutritional
enrichment occurring about 16 hours after feeding, dependent on temperature. The
enriched BBS can be stored in the refrigerator for up to three days.
Aquaculturists have supplemented live brine shrimp with
nutritional components such as vitamins or calcium for years, and there are a
number of different formulas on the market, with Selcon the one most commonly
seen. But fishkeepers aren’t limited to commercial preparations
for brine shrimp supplementation. Many aquarists make their own formulae.
There are lots of things you can use to gut load shrimp
nauplii,
including fish oil (cod liver oil), vitamins, and some lecithin (as an
emulsifier). Simply mix the ingredients in a blender, add to salt water and put
in the newly hatched brine shrimp. Agitate this mixture for 12 hours. The baby
brine shrimp become HUFA saturated little packets. You can also add Spirulina
algae powder to the mix.
"I have used Selcon by American Marine ," says Bill
Vannerson. "Besides the Unsaturated Fatty Acids, it contains vitamins C and
B12," which can also be added to frozen or freeze dried foods.
"For years I have been adding liquid vitamins to brine
shrimp about a half hour before they are fed to the fish," says Al
Anderson. More fish survive and they appear to grow faster. Al used has used
Marineland vitamins, but now uses Vitakem brand vitamins.
Mach Fukada uses Selcon or Algamac 2000. Both work for
enriching artemia nauplii. "It is possible to overdo and kill
the batch [of nauplii] if you use too much" enrichment product, he warns,
or if you overstock the enrichment container.
Some aquarists have found that a pinch of baker’s yeast and
a few drops of liquid vitamin provide an effective supplement to the hatch water
for enriching nauplii.
-- G.C.K.A. Newsletter - November 2003
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A couple of recipes for
Frozen Fish Food
A number of aquarists, particularly those with large numbers
of tanks and/or fish, have long known that a number of recipes exist for making
high-quality, good fish foods at home. If you can find a convenient supplier,
beef heart is usually fairly inexpensive and makes excellent fish food. is uis
so cheep that it really pays to make your own [food].
Here’s how one aquarist makes beef heart food.
Beef Heart Recipe
Buy at least two whole hearts. Using a very good, sharp carving knife, cut away everything
that isn’t red meat–fat, veins, covering membranes, etc. Chop the red meat
into stew size chunks. Fill a blender or food processor about 4" deep with
meat. Add just enough water to cover meat. Blend. You want a thick gruel or
malt-like consistency. If the result is too thin, add more meat. Pour blended
meat into a large mixing bowl.
Using the same technique, process and add to the heart
mixture:
Pour in
Put 1-1/2 c. water in a pot and boil. Add 4 pkts. (one regular
size box) Knox gelatin and stir until melted. Pour into mixing bowl and stir
well.
Buy two 40-count boxes of high quality 1 quart freezer bags.
Pout about 1-2 cups mix into each one. Flatten to about 1/4" thick and
stack in a suitable container.
Note: Fishes fed solely on beef
heart may show problems with color or body shape. Some aquarists routinely add
garlic extract to beef heart recipes, citing its effects against parasites and
as an overall tonic for fish.
Add the rest of ingredients listed above (green peas, carrots, etc.) and mix and freeze as directed.
-- G.C.K.A. Newsletter, October 2005 Return to top of page
Another Live Food
Fruit Flies
(Drosophila
melanogaster)
Wingless fruit flies (which cannot fly) are
an excellent live food for tropical fish, and can be easily cultured by the
aquarist. All you need (according to Cal Hin, writing in AquaTropica, Volume 1
number 11) are flies, a container, a culture medium, and about 10 minutes a
month.
He uses the following method:
Put 2 tablespoons of medium in each clean
plastic glass and add 4 tablespoons water. Add a little Fleischman’s Dry Yeast
(about a dozen grains), then insert a small piece of 1/8" Styrofoam (about
2"x2") or cardboard. This provides a surface for egglaying.
Put 15-20 flies in each glass and cover it
with a half piece of paper towel held in place with a rubber band. Mark the date
on the glass, then put it on a shelf in the fishroom. In 10-15 days you should
begin to see worms (maggots), then pupae and more flies. Add a bit of aged water
to the culture medium every two weeks to keep the culture moist.
Harvest the cultures every two weeks or so.
By staggering the culture starts, you can provide a regular supply of larvae for
feeding. Each culture should provide 2-3 hatches before the culture starts to
fail. Some cultures will last up to two months.
When a culture stops producing, dispose of
the glass, or wash it out and start over.
To feed your fish fruit flies, simply tip
the glass and the flies will drop out. If they’re stubborn, tap the glass.
Remember to cover the tank when feeding fruit flies, since the flies can crawl
or jump out of aquaria.
--G.C.K.A. Newsletter, May 2002
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Another method for Fruit Flies
To raise your own flightless or wingless fruit flies requires little in the
way of equipment, says G.C.K.A. member Tom Cook, who shared his secrets with
fellow members at a recent club meeting.
Using information from a variety of sources and his own extensive experience, Jack Wattley, famed discus breeder, has been able to collect, maintain, and breed a fish known for its high level of difficulty. In presentations at the American Cichlid Association conventions in 1990 and 1992, Mr. Wattley mentioned the use of garlic oil against intestinal nematodes.
Reference: Fairfield, Terry F. "Garlic Is More Than Seasoning." Finsanati, newsletter of the Greater Cincinnati Aquarium Society, July-August 1998.
-- G.C.K.A. Newsletter, September 2004 Return to top of page
An Old Standby - Grindal Worms
For years, killikeepers have depended on cultures of Grindal
worms as one of their live food sources. Also known as Dwarf White Worms,
grindals are cultured in a similar manner, but prefer warmer temperatures than
do whiteworms.
Although an excellent fish food, they have not always been the
easiest of cultures to keep going. Some aquarists have excellent luck raising
them; others raise them only with difficulty.
"Over the years I've had a lot of different Grindal
starters," says Tim Addis. All were set up in the same way, using the same
ingredients, and fed the same way. "Some starters do well and go on to form
other strong cultures, but others seem weak and don't seem to get going."
Basically, raising grindal worms is very similar to raising
whiteworms.
Bedding/Culture Materials
"Recipes" for the culture medium for grindal worms
vary – topsoil; half peat moss and half potting soil (without additives); 3/4
peat moss and 1/4 manure, microwaved before use to sterilize it; even wet foam
rubber. Bill Gallagher, who uses coconut fiber ("cocopeat") in his
killifish tanks and fry containers, raises his grindal worms on it, too.
"The grindals can be found in large numbers on the surface of the moist
coconut fiber a day or so after feeding." Whatever the culture medium, keep
it moist, but not soggy.
Feeding Grindal Worms
A number of aquarists have experimented with different foods
for feeding grindal worms. "About two years ago I did some experiment[tion],"
says Matt Hirvonen. "The results were overwhelmingly in favor of Gerber
Mixed Cereal." Among the other foods that have been used are oatmeal, wheat
germ, brewer's yeast, various dry cereals, bread, bread soaked in milk, and
Purina cat and dog food.
However, these are not the only possibilities.
"Try raw peanuts," suggests Dave Ogershok.
"Works better than anything I've tried yet."
"I feed Purina game fish chow pellets," says Ray
Wolff, "and the worms pile up around the perimeter of the pellets."
Harvesting
Having a healthy culture going doesn't mean that you can
feed your fish. You still have to collect the worms, or separate them from the
growth medium.
"Just use a slice of bread soaked in skim milk as
food," says Bill Shenefelt. "Lay it right on top of the dirt. The
worms will come up and eat it from the bottom." In 48 hours a good culture
will have eaten the slice and be a mass of nearly solid worms. "Just reach
down and grab a handful." The mass is nearly all worms. If you want to be
certain that the mass is completely clean, you can put it in water, then siphon
off pure worms from the bottom of the container.
Or put a piece of damp 3 inch or 4 inch square glass, plastic,
or plastic needlework canvas (from the craft store) on top of the dirt. Cover
the box to keep it dark. The next day lift out the glass; worms will have
congregated on the bottom of it. You can also feed the culture, putting food on
top of the glass as well to entice the worms there. "I sprinkle them
lightly with wheat germ," says Doug Karpa-Wilson, "and when the food
on the dirt is gone, they crawl up on the ... squares for me."
To feed grindals to his killies, Bill Gallagher simply scrape
or grabs a chunk of grindals that collect on the surface of the culture (a day
or so after feeding the worms), along with whatever coconut fiber is still
attached, and toss them into the tanks. "It doesn't seem to matter if any
of the coconut fiber ... gets into the tanks, since there is usually [some] in
the tanks anyway."
"I use a bamboo skewer to get my worms," reports Ray
Wolff. "They seem to 'grab' onto it."
Or try using a piece of plastic mesh material (from the crafts
store). "It seems to attract them in greater numbers. Cleaner, too, it
seems," according to Dave Ogershok.
"Dig a couple of thumb-size pits in the surface and fill
with food," suggests Wright Huntley, "like cheap fish flakes. Cover
'most of the surface' with a piece of clear glass or stiff plastic. When you
come back in a few hours, thousands of worms will be out on the underside ...
like a sunburst around the food."
Problems
Mites. These are pesky critters
that can contaminate all kinds of worm cultures. To get rid of them, flooding
the culture works well. The mites float and are easy to pour off the culture.
This may have to be repeated several times. Another solution is mite paper,
available from Carolina Biological and other sources. It is "shelf
paper" that has been treated with insecticide, and helps keep mites from
migrating from one culture to another.
Flies. Several types of small flies may colonize
a grindal culture. Most can be dealt with using a combination of flypaper (to
capture the adults) or moth crystals (placed in a small container on top of the
culture; to kill the adults) and flooding (as in treatment for mites) to wash
out the larvae, which can then be fed to your fish.
-- G.C.K.A. Newsletter, September 2001
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A number of breeders make up their own fish foods, to be used alone or in combination with live foods and commercially prepared formulas. This recipe was adapted by Roger Hoelter from "Paste Food for Killies," by Dan Katz, originally published in Journal of the American Killifish Association (JAKA), Jan./Feb. 1989, Vol. 22, No. 1.
Fish Food from Gelatin Base
2 cans fish-based Friskies cat food (tuna, salmon, or
whitefish)
1 jar baby food – strained carrots, peas, etc.
4 packets Knox unflavored gelatin, dissolved in 4 tbs. hot water
You can also add a can of cocktail shrimp or a fresh boiled shrimp, parsley,
garlic, etc.
Put gelatin and water in a small saucepan; stir and heat until
dissolved. Immediately pour the gelatin and other ingredients into a blender and
mix for a minute. Pour out into Zip-loc bags. Cool to gel, then freeze. To use
this food, grate the frozen block into water and use an eye dropper or baster to
deliver the food
Lee Harper uses a kitchen grater with small holes to grate
enough for a single feeding onto a shoe box lid. He rinses this off with some
dechlorinated tap water and feeds the resulting slurry with an eyedropper. For
larger fish he slices off pieces with a razor blade.
"I’ve [also] been using Dan Katz’s formula,"
says Jack Heller, who uses strained sweet potatoes for the vegetable ingredient.
"It takes a few feedings before [the fish] get the idea [that this is
food]," he says, "but most killies love it." You do have to watch
for pH drop with this food, as you do with any meat product.
-- G.C.K.A. Newsletter, September 2003
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You’ve heard the term, but just what is this stuff?
Infusoria is all those little microscopic and just barely
visible creatures that make excellent food for baby and small-mouthed fish. It
includes Paramecia, Rotifers, Euglena (green-water flagellates), and numerous
other creatures. Most are unselective filter feeders that eat free-swimming
bacteria, including some pests, such as Oodinium [velvet] and Ich larvae.
If you have living plants in your killie tanks, you most
likely have infusoria already, to the benefit of your fish.
To encourage infusoria, you can add a strand of Java Fern or
Java Moss to hatching containers along with a drop or two of Liquifry #1. Done
at hatch time, this assures the hatching fry of an immediate food supply.
If you prefer to culture your infusoria separately, there are
several proven methods.
George Morris dries extra Najas Grass from his tanks between
layers of newspapers, then bags it when dry. To start an infusoria culture, he
fills a gallon jar with tank water and stuffs a handful of dried Najas into it.
Al Boatman reports that rainwater in a gallon jar with some
boiled lettuce works well. Remove lettuce and add more water once the culture
has started. You can also add several frozen bloodworms to the culture.
"Best Paramecium culture yet," he says.
To feed fry, simply remove some of the liquid from the culture
container. Using an eyedropper, feed this directly into your fry containers.
-- GCKA Newsletter, July 2002
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At a meeting of the Central New York Aquarium Society, several experienced club members presented a program on live foods. The following is condensed from the resulting article by Jennifer Lioto, published in The Reflector, February 2003, Vol. 26, No. 6.
White Worms – presented by
Dr. Dan Nielsen
White worms are great as a breeding conditioner, and a cheap
way to have lots of live fish food.
Dan uses the short, thin wall styros with a mixture of
African Violet soil and worm bedding for his white worm cultures. He believes
the most important part is to start with a quart or more of culture. Smaller
starters don’t get established well enough.
The best food he has found is cheap white bread, and some
yeast mixed with water. He also gives them pureed carrots and instant mashed
potatoes, placed on top of the bread. Put a 4x4 inch square of glass on top of
the food, then harvest the worms when they congregate on the glass.
Pests can cause problems. Mites can be removed by soaking
the culture in water for a day or two. This doesn’t hurt the culture, and
the mites float and can be easily removed.
To maintain the culture, check the food daily and change if
needed. If you’re going away for a few days, add a few handfuls of peat
moss. He has left cultures for up to a week.
Brine Shrimp – presented by Winnie Pitzeruse
For hatching brine shrimp, Winnie uses 1 gallon jars set at
a slight angle so eggs don’t collect on the bottom, or for smaller amounts,
a San Francisco Bay brand soda bottle hatchery.
She has used any kind of salt for hatching, but usually uses
rock salt (the kind used for melting ice. Dr. Dan says he uses farm grade salt
used for horses). Salinity should be 1.02 to 1.025, a handful or so depending
on the size of the container. Winnie uses an air pump with an airline hooked
to piece of rigid tubing, no air stone needed. Keep a good bubble going so
that all eggs are moving, but not too vigorous or the eggs will get all over
the sides of the container.
At 80ºF, eggs will hatch in 24 hours. To collect, turn the
air off and let the mixture settle for a bit. The nauplii are attracted
to light; you can use a flashlight to attract them to one area. Shells will
float; brine shrimp can be siphoned out from mid water.
Dr. Dan explained how he decapsulates his brine shrimp,
removing the shells so the nauplii hatch faster and there are no
floating shells to deal with.
In a soda bottle, he adds a flat teaspoon of eggs and
bubbles them slowly for 1-4 hours. He then adds 3/4 cup bleach and bubbles for
exactly 8 minutes. The shells totally dissolve. He then strains through a
cloth (or a brine shrimp net) and rinses with water. He then fills the bottle
with salt water. The brine shrimp will be wiggling in 18 hours. Feed
immediately; they will be dead in 24.
Microworms – presented by
Winnie Pitzeruse
Microworms are great for small fry such as bettas and
gouramis, and are much smaller than newly hatched brine shrimp.
To raise them, Winnie uses a medium of Quaker quick oats.
Only a small culture is required as a start. Take 2 popsicle sticks, soak them
in water, and criss- cross them on top of the oatmeal. Within a day or two you’ll
have a good culture and can start feeding. To start a new culture, use a stick
from the previous culture, or skim the top of the culture with a spoon and
place on the new media.
Vinegar Eels – presented by Ron Fabiny
Vinegar eels are very small, so great food for small fry.
Start with a mixture of 50% water and 50% cider vinegar. Add a starter
culture. Feed them cubed apple pieces or apple juice.
To collect and feed vinegar eels, siphon them through a
coffee filter or brine shrimp net and rinse well. Vinegar in your
aquaria can affect pH. [Alternatively, soak a small piece of panty hose or a piece
of nylon kitchen scrubber in the culture. Squeeze out excess moisture, then
rinse material out in plain water. Feed this dilute solution. – Ed.]
-- G.C.K.A. Newsletter - July 2005
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Want to Raise Those Nauplii?
Raising Adult Brine Shrimp
Brine shrimp have long been a staple of aquarists, in both
their nauplii and adult forms. Brine shrimp can provide a reasonable source of
both carotenoids and hemoglobin in the diet, but should not be used as a sole
food source.
For some aquarists, collecting live brine shrimp from the wild
is possible. Most of us must buy or raise our own. Hatching out brine shrimp
cysts is easy; raising them to adulthood may be quite difficult, requiring
volumes of water, gentle currents, sunlight, and time.
"About 10 years ago … I raised brine shrimp on a
regular basis," reports Brian Watters, "but more for my own amusement
than as a source of live food. Even when successful, the number of brine shrimp
one can raise is not worth the effort." Brian worked with several container
sizes, the largest being 10 gallons. He used marine salt to reach a specific
gravity of 1.040 (about twice seawater). A small sponge filter provided moderate
circulation. He inoculated the setup with newly-hatched nauplii and fed yeast
(just enough to turn the water cloudy), growing the shrimp to adult size in 2-3
weeks. Later on, Barry tried various other foods, with varying results.
"The bottom line," he says, "is that it is an interesting
experience to raise brine shrimp."
Some time back, an article in Aquarium Fish Magazine
suggested using a series of 2-3 liter pop bottles, cut and mounted as you would
for a brine shrimp hatchery. Newly hatched nauplii were added and the bottles
set in a sunny window. After the nauplii had reached 1/8", green algae from
the bottom glass of an aquarium cover was blended with water to feed them.
"Many aquarists kill brine shrimp with kindness by overfeeding them,"
the article continued. "Neglect them and you are more likely to get a brine
shrimp culture established."
An internet source (Artemia FAQ 2.0, available at http://www.aqualink.com/marine/z-atemia.html),
suggests using a 10-20 gal glass tank with acrylic panels set into the corners
to make an oval. Add to this a series (6-8) of lift tubes to provide a constant
circular water flow. Best growth rates are achieved at 25-30°
C (77-86° F) with salinities of 30-50 ppt and low
light levels. Recommended foods were microalgae and inert foods such as yeasts,
rice bran, whey, etc.
Andrea Caiola, from Italy, reports some success using 6.6 gal.
glass containers filled with very hard tap and distilled water in a 50/50 mix.
He added non-iodized salt to reach a density of 1035, placed the container
outdoors where it was exposed to sunlight for part of the day, and left the
water to age. After more than a month (the water had turned quite green) he
introduced some nauplii and waited. In another couple of weeks he began to feed
them, using a blend of wheat flour (85 g.), brewer’s yeast (10 g), and
spirulina powder (5 g). He fed a small amount daily, being careful to not
overfeed. "I have seen a friend’s tank filled with more than a hundred
adults raised this way," he reports.
The bottom line? For feeding your fish adult brine shrimp, it
may be less expensive to simply purchase them from wholesale suppliers.
-- G.C.K.A. Newsletter, February-March 2003
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Raising Worms on Foam -- An Additional Method for Grindals
For anyone who raises grindal worms as a food for killifish,
mites are an ongoing/recurring problem. Paul Jarvis has developed a method of
raising grindals on foam that helps to eliminate them.
First, place a bit of food on the surface of the existing
substrate (peat or soil) to attract the worms en masse. Then place food and all
in a clear jar of room temperature water. Let stand a few minutes until all the
mites have floated to the surface. Stir water gently to spin the mites to the
center, and siphon off.
At this point the worms should be clean and mite free.
Using tap water, thoroughly wash a two-inch thick piece of
foam rubber cut to fit inside a plastic shoebox. The foam should be about an
inch shorter than the box interior, to leave about a 1/2" space at the
ends. Place the foam in the shoebox and add enough water so it comes to within
1/4" of the top of the foam. Squeeze foam to eliminate any air pockets.
Using a pipette or eyedropper, place the cleaned worms on top
of the foam.
To feed and collect the worms, cut sheets of white printer
paper into 4"x4" squares. Place a dampened square of paper on the foam
and the worms’ favorite food (Paul uses flake or pellet foods) on top. The
paper allows removal of any soured food, and collection of worms for feeding.
If you use one end of the foam for paper placement one time,
and the other end the next, you can get the worms to migrate back and forth so
you can use fresh paper each time. If you leave the paper in place, the worms
will eventually eat it.
Soon a magnifying glass will reveal the worms’ tiny white
eggs on the surface of the foam.
Keep the shoebox covered to keep out mites.
If the water becomes foul, just pour it off and add fresh. If
the foam becomes foul, gently squeeze it out and add fresh water. -- GCKA Newsletter, February 2002
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"Live foods," says Bill Childers, "can provide that extra
boost that moves you from ‘keeping them alive’ toward ‘enticing them to
breed’." This is a major distinction between the casual fishkeeper and
the aquarist who wants to successfully breed his fish and raise healthy fry.
Feeding
Harvesting
"Never harvest by just netting out the daphnia. Instead, siphon them
into a bucket through a shrimp net, refilling the tank with clean water. The
quantity of water to remove depends on the size of your daphnia tank."
About every 10 days, siphon the mulm from the bottom.
A supplemental fry food -- Resting Rotifers
Many aquarists know you can successfully keep fry in
greenwater the consistency of pea soup – most of the time. Sometimes you will
get very few fry surviving, since fry don’t eat greenwater directly, but the
microcreatures that live in it.
Aquaculture Supply (formerly Florida
Aquafarms; http://wwwaquaculture-supply.com)
has a product called "Resting Rotifers." A few drops of this liquid
(less than the recommended amount) added to a greenwater tank will start a
rotifer culture. In a week or so you’ll see the greenwater clear slightly; a
look with a microscope will reveal a healthy culture of swimming rotifers. This
greenwater can then be fed to your fry.
John Alegre says that he keeps a 20 gal. tank of greenwater
growing under a Metal Halide lamp. The tank contains a mass of Java Moss. He
adds some "Resting Rotifers" and a couple of cups of dense green water
about once a week to maintain a continuous rotifer culture. Addition of some of
the Java Moss (or water rinsed from it) to fry containers then provides an
immediate food source.
-- G.C.K.A. Newsletter, September 2003
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Have you thought that you’d like to try raising rotifers for feeding to
your fish, but didn’t know how to go about it? John Alegre suggests a system
that he’s used successfully.
Another Possible Food – Springtails
There are a number of dependable,
nutritious live foods for our killifish that we can culture at home (given
adequate space, appropriate conditions, and understanding living companions).
Among them are brine shrimp, whiteworms, grindal worms, microworms, and fruit
flies.
We know, too, that a number of other
"bugs" and "critters" make excellent killie food – ants,
aphids, moth, beetle and fly larvae, etc. Among this less well known and less
well utilized group of potential live foods are springtails.
Springtails are pimitive insects frequently
found among duckweed, although most live in the soil. Springtails may be black
or white, are usually globular in shape, and may reach 1.5mm in size. They are
often found "infesting" worm cultures.
Springtails are easy to culture using a
batch of damp peat and flake food. To harvest, simply flood the peat and scoop
out the floating bugs. They proliferate "like mad," says one
killikeeper, in a medium of peatmoss and worm bedding. A pinch of agricultural
lime per cup of soil mix may help keep the pH within a range they like. Another
aquarist has his springtails in a jar with duckweed on top. The springtails eat
the decaying duckweed and breed on top of the leaves; meanwhile he has
Aphyosemion bivattum fry hovering just below the surface waiting for the
springtails to move within reach. Healthy fry with full bellies without being
fed every day – a real timesaver.
"The [springtail] culture itself is
rather like a vinegar eel culture," says Roger Sieloff. "Live ones eat
the dead ones and maintain the population indefinitely. If one harvests them on
a regular basis, any organic material seems to be all these little things
require as food.… Mine grew to a staggering population density on a soybean
based redworm food."
Springtails do, however, have a down side.
Some killifish don’t seem willing to learn to eat them. "I consider them
more pest than food," says Wright Huntley. "They chew on plants, and
most killies are inept at catching them."
"I keep springtails in a plastic
covered container (10" x 6") filled with peat," says Bill
Edwards. "I feed flake fish food about once a week. Sprinkle it on and
spray until wet. That’s it. To harvest, grab a bunch of peat, put in another
container, flood with water and presto, floating bugs. Squeeze out the excess
water and put the peat back." Feed the springtails to your killifish.
--G.C.K.A. Newsletter, May 2002
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What Do You Feed Your Worms?
Aquarists have long
known that small worms of various types (microworms, grindal worms, white worms)
are excellent food for tropical fish. Many hobbyists even culture their own
worms at home.
But what to
feed those cultures to keep the supply of nutritious fish food coming?
The following
are a few suggestions.
-- G.C.K.A. Newsletter, August 2001 Return to top of page
Page copyright G.C.K.A.and Donna M. Recktenwalt 2001-2005. Return to G.C.K.A. Home Page.