live food
- Thread starter Tener ds
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Hi all,
I feed my fish on a lot of live food in the summer, they are mainly getting additional mosquito larvae and Daphnia at the moment, and they get Grindal worms, Red worms, Blood worms and Micro-worms (fry, Thread-fin Rainbows) & Fruit flies (for Hatchets, Pencils, Killies, Betta etc) all year around.
I've never had any problems with live food, and I think the perils of feeding it are mainly fictional. If you take Mosquito larvae as an example, (as long as you aren't in an area with West Nile Disease, Malaria etc.), they are incredibly easy to culture, you need a bucket of rain-water, a good handful of grass-clippings and a cork. Fill the bucket up with rain-water, put it out-side somewhere where it isn't in full sun all day, add the grass-clippings and float the cork (the female mosquito needs a platform to lay her eggs from). A week later you have mosquito larvae. Harvest them with a net, rinse them with clean water, discard any dead ones, and then feed them to the fish. They are 100% fish safe.
cheers Darrel
I feed my fish on a lot of live food in the summer, they are mainly getting additional mosquito larvae and Daphnia at the moment, and they get Grindal worms, Red worms, Blood worms and Micro-worms (fry, Thread-fin Rainbows) & Fruit flies (for Hatchets, Pencils, Killies, Betta etc) all year around.
I've never had any problems with live food, and I think the perils of feeding it are mainly fictional. If you take Mosquito larvae as an example, (as long as you aren't in an area with West Nile Disease, Malaria etc.), they are incredibly easy to culture, you need a bucket of rain-water, a good handful of grass-clippings and a cork. Fill the bucket up with rain-water, put it out-side somewhere where it isn't in full sun all day, add the grass-clippings and float the cork (the female mosquito needs a platform to lay her eggs from). A week later you have mosquito larvae. Harvest them with a net, rinse them with clean water, discard any dead ones, and then feed them to the fish. They are 100% fish safe.
cheers Darrel
just added 4 to the big tank and 3 to the edge,all gone in less than 10 secs.2 of my rasboras was having a tug of war with one of the biger ones.lol.
well both buckets have tons of bloodworms now,is it ok to feedthe fish every day with the worms or just every other day?
Hi all,
The first year I kept Apistogramma I fed them entirely on live "pond food" all through the summer, and I then had some difficulty getting them to eat dry food again in the autumn.
Now after their fast day (I don't feed them one day a week) I give them pellets first (Astax red crumb) to keep them eating dry food.
I do the same with Otos and L129, I make sure they have a few days every couple of weeks when they just get vegetables (usually cucumber and/or sweet potato) and sinking wafers, rather than earth-worms and the "shrimp mix" from this thread. <http://www.plecoplanet.com/forum/showthread.php?p=65882&highlight=shrimp+mix+darrel#post65882>
cheers Darrel
I usually give mine a bit of a rotation, so that they don't have the same food every day. I don't think it probably matters that much nutritionally, but Apistogrammas & Cories really love love live Blood-worms, and if they get them every day they don't tend to bother too much about the Daphnia or Grindal Worms, they just wait for the Blood-worms too arrive.
The first year I kept Apistogramma I fed them entirely on live "pond food" all through the summer, and I then had some difficulty getting them to eat dry food again in the autumn.
Now after their fast day (I don't feed them one day a week) I give them pellets first (Astax red crumb) to keep them eating dry food.
I do the same with Otos and L129, I make sure they have a few days every couple of weeks when they just get vegetables (usually cucumber and/or sweet potato) and sinking wafers, rather than earth-worms and the "shrimp mix" from this thread. <http://www.plecoplanet.com/forum/showthread.php?p=65882&highlight=shrimp+mix+darrel#post65882>
cheers Darrel
Hi all,
A lot of people won't feed them to Malawi and Tanganikya cichlids, and there does seem to be a problem with this, but I'm not convinced by the argument that it is the "chitonous exoskeleton".
This is what Mark Breeze (Microman) wrote on the BCA forum
Walker, I. (1998) "Population dynamics of Chironomidae (Diptera) in the Central Amazonian black water river Tarumã-Mirim (Amazonas, Brazil)" Oecologia Brasiliensis 235 - 252
Delariva, R. L. and Agostinho, A. A. (2001), "Relationship between morphology and diets of six neotropical loricariids". Journal of Fish Biology, 58: 832–847.
cheers Darrel
Bob, I'm not sure. Personally I've never had any problem with them, but I've only ever fed live ones that I've collected myself. I'd keep away from the frozen ones, based upon what I've read.
A lot of people won't feed them to Malawi and Tanganikya cichlids, and there does seem to be a problem with this, but I'm not convinced by the argument that it is the "chitonous exoskeleton".
This is what Mark Breeze (Microman) wrote on the BCA forum
&
All the evidence we have (unfortuantely there isn't much) is that they form a proportion of the natural diet of many amazonian fish, including Loricariids.
Walker, I. (1998) "Population dynamics of Chironomidae (Diptera) in the Central Amazonian black water river Tarumã-Mirim (Amazonas, Brazil)" Oecologia Brasiliensis 235 - 252
Delariva, R. L. and Agostinho, A. A. (2001), "Relationship between morphology and diets of six neotropical loricariids". Journal of Fish Biology, 58: 832–847.
cheers Darrel
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Hi all,
In this case we've had a very similar question before, so I did some research to see what I could find. I've always fed the fish any Bloodworms I an find and all the evidence that connected Bloodworms and fish death seemed to be anecdotal, but there was a considerable amount of it, much of it from people like Mark Breeze, who are extremely experienced fish keepers and have succeeded in breeding some pretty tricky fish.
I also tried to find whether Blood-worms occurred in the tropics (Diptera:Chironomidae), and I found that they occur all over the world, and that they are always readily eaten by fish as part of their natural diet. I also talked to some Trout fisherman at Chew Valley Lake (W. of Bristol) and they told me that even the big trout eat loads of them, and that when you gut a fish in the summer it will be stuffed full of them.
All of this led me think that it is a real problem with Bloodworms, but it is almost certainly to do with either the conditions that the commercial bloodworms were grown in, or what happened during the freezing process.
I'm happy that if you grow your own bloodworms, feed them live <http://www.plecoplanet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2936> and don't feed big bloodworms to small fry they are safe for the fish to eat.
cheers Darrel
Stan, ask my wife she is always telling me that I don't know/can't do anything.
In this case we've had a very similar question before, so I did some research to see what I could find. I've always fed the fish any Bloodworms I an find and all the evidence that connected Bloodworms and fish death seemed to be anecdotal, but there was a considerable amount of it, much of it from people like Mark Breeze, who are extremely experienced fish keepers and have succeeded in breeding some pretty tricky fish.
I also tried to find whether Blood-worms occurred in the tropics (Diptera:Chironomidae), and I found that they occur all over the world, and that they are always readily eaten by fish as part of their natural diet. I also talked to some Trout fisherman at Chew Valley Lake (W. of Bristol) and they told me that even the big trout eat loads of them, and that when you gut a fish in the summer it will be stuffed full of them.
All of this led me think that it is a real problem with Bloodworms, but it is almost certainly to do with either the conditions that the commercial bloodworms were grown in, or what happened during the freezing process.
I'm happy that if you grow your own bloodworms, feed them live <http://www.plecoplanet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2936> and don't feed big bloodworms to small fry they are safe for the fish to eat.
cheers Darrel