Live foods

[Corey Theis]

What live foods do you use and how do you keep it going. Worms, Daphnia and so on

[Bob Grauer]

Corey
I use baby brine and microworms and both do very well. I have tried Daphnia but they never flourish for me.
Bob

[Corey Theis]

I guess my main Question is, Are live foods better for the fish? or will frozen do the trick. I don’t have a lot of real state (bob) to grow a lot of live foods. But i would like to play with daphnia does any one have any.

[Bob Grauer]

Corey
My feeling is that live is always the best, frozen is the next best thing (although lots of water) but more important is a nice healthy balanced diet. There is some daphnia out there.
Bob

[Corey Theis]

I grown my micro worms in a small glad wear with a lid that has holes poked in it. I use oatmeal and a pinch of yeast cooked in the microwave. Let cool and add some of the old worms in to seed the new mix. I have grown them with out the yeast and have had no problems; they just don’t last as long. I have also grown them on wheat bread and has worked out well. When harvesting them I wipe my finger down the side of the container and dip into the tanks. It is time to replace the mix when it starts to smell or not produce many worms. You can add a little oat meal as the worms eat it away this will give you another few weeks of harvesting.

[Corey Theis]

Baby brine shrimp

I use a mason jar with holes drilled in to the lid and an air tube put through the middle hole almost to the bottom of the jar. I add water, 2 teaspoons of rock salt, and 2 teaspoons Epson salt. Let mixture bubble (say on medium to low) over night. I add ¼ to ½ teaspoon of shrimp eggs and bubble mixture for 24 to 36 hours. Depending on temperature and amount of Light. I have played with temp a little and the warmer it is the faster they hatch for me. To harvest I use a turkey baster and suck out the baby brine and feed right into the tank. Some times I will rinse them off if the fry are really important to me. I have been using this method for about a year and am going to change because it is hard to get the baby brine away from the eggs hatch or unhatched. So a lot of eggs are getting into my tanks and makes them look dirty and I hate that.

[Chuck Pollet]

The micro worms we have at the school live on potato flakes. I guess they are what you would use for instant mashed potatoes. Personally I always hand mash real potatoes when I eat them! ha ha Apparently this cuts down on smell as opposed to oatmeal, or so I've heard. I can't remember if I tried that way back in college or what, but I was not so patient in my younger years. So what I have worked out so far is to put a clump of the potatoe flakes in the center of the container and just sprinkle the yeast over it. Then cover the yeast with water from a fine mist spray bottle until it is wet all the way through. Then the worms the next day will really go nuts and be all over the place crawling up the sides. When the worms stop crawling up as much in the next day or two I will add more yeast and water on top of the pile of potatoes in there. Then they really go nuts. I just keep sprinkling the yeast over the pile of potatoes until it is gone... melted, eaten into just a watery mixture... Then I add a new pile. Works great. We have tons of worms to feed to the fish all the time. So far fry grow fast on them, and small tanganyikans love them. My larger fish don't really even seem to notice them at all.

[Corey Theis]

Still looking for some daphnia or some black worms.

[Chuck Vasquez]

Micro worms are the way to go, and my fish loved my cherry shrimp when i had them.

[Adam Delohery]

Hey Chuck, did you get that microworm colony from Pollet?