what live foods do you keep?

[aspen]

i keep discus, apistos and tetras and some cats etc. i want to keep 2 or 3 types of live foods which are easy to culture and good to feed. what live foods would fit into this category? i don't want to spend my life tending to my live foods but want to feed them occasionally or even daily.

i have been considering microworms, white worms or red wrigglers, and the occasional 1/2 pound of california blackworms, plus of course bbs.

rick

 

[farm41]

Daphnia, just put them in a old tank in the garage or on the porch and feed them yeast every couple of days, fish love them.

 

[cootwarm]

I'm setting up to try vinegar eels. From what I've read, they make an excellent fry food. They are about the size of microworms, but they will survive longer in the aquarium and they swim. This way they are also more apt to get eaten rather than sink to the bottom and die (and rot).

They are easy to culture, just a little tricky to harvest. Here is a website that describes them.
http://www.livefoodcultures.com/vinegareels.html

Michael

 

[aspen]

matt how big do daphnia get? can adults eat them? what is the high/low temp for them?

rick

 

[farm41]

The daphnia magna which I keep are pretty big, up to 5mm, adults can eat them, I feed them to my 1.5" fish, and they are gone in minutes. You can get smaller species like moina and pulex. I have an article on saved on my hard drive that I could send you all about the life cycles and feeding. Lots of food recipes for them.

It's real fun watching the apistos chasing the daphnia while darting arround. The daphnia also last for days or longer in the aquarium if you overfeed. That's the great part about daphnia, you really can't overfeed, they will just swim around until eaten. I think magna are good for up to 90F and my culture got real slow at 40F.

If you do a search for daphnia and the live foods digest, you will get more info than you will want to read.

HTH

 

[mk_ultra]

Vinegar eels are great. The larger discus don't seem to notice them. But the sub 3" relish them. APisto love them also. Idiot proof, as my large 1 gallon jar can attest to. They are really not that hard to harvest.
I put 2 coffe filters into a mason jar. With a turkey baster a draw some out( a little goes a long way) and strain them. I rinse the filter afterwards with cool tap water. I then just dip the filter in the tank.
That easy.

 

[cootwarm]

Hi Matt,

Are these Daphnia Magna very prolific? Should they be cultured in an old aquarium or would a plastic barrel work just as well? I've thought about culturing Daphnia in the past but decided against it because I figured they need a fairly large tank (plus a tank of green water) to get any kind of yield. Was this a bad assumption on my part?

The Bug Farm advertises starter cultures of Daphnia pulex but not Daphnia magna. Do you know of another place I could get a starter culture?
I'm thinking I should at least give it a try. I like the idea of a little over feeding (the fish) without worrying about the excess rotting on the bottom of the tank.

Thanks,
Michael

 

[farm41]

Yes, they are very prolific, you can find cultures on aquabid, in the live food isle. An old aquarium is just fine, I have 3 cultures going right now, a 60g, 20g , and a 10g tank, just spares in the garage, plastic barrels are great too.

If you want, I can email you an article on daphnia Moina, lots of recipes for feeding daphnia.

 

[cootwarm]

Hi Matt,

Are all three of your cultures Daphnia magna? Or is each culture a different size species?

Thank you for the article on Daphnia moina. Have you ever tried culturing them?
The Bug Farm is selling starter cultures of them. Says they're smaller than Daphnia pulex, about the size of a large Rotifer. Like regular daphnia and vinegar eels, they can live in the aquarium for days.

Michael

 

[farm41]

I have had moina, but they froze this last winter. I actually had moina and magna in the same tank, don't know if it wise, but that is what I had. I would like to get another culture of moina going again, better for young apistos. You can feed a growout tank more than they can eat for days, and no fouling.


Gotta love'em.

 

[Neil]

Matt,
Moina sound pretty interesting to me. i think that I am going to get a culture and try them out. The bug farm is currently out and didn't reply when I emailed about an expected return of their stock. I have contacted the only place that seems to have them now - dallasdiscus.com. Do you know anything about them and do you have a suggestion of another source? I am also wondering about problems with hydra, etc. in regards to culturing these.
Neil

 

[apistodave]

I have a 5000 gallon doughboy pool with Daphnia and everyting else under the sun in it if you can get away with it go for it but for a Daphnia culture I think you are better off going out and getting some local ones and culturing them

 

[fishgeek]

u can always buy a bag of live food and just let then grow on as such, means there will be some form of daphnia at your lfs!

mine are in the bath tub i pulled out when renovating
just leave, tank/bucket/rubbish bin/watter butt, whatever you decide outside where it can catch some sun for algal growth

they are that easy
andrew

 

[apistodave]

The bathtub--hahah it's obvious you aint married!!!!!!!!!!!! Me neither I once grew convicts in the tub to feed to Pikes.