The benefits of feeding live food to fish in a community tank are many: live food will improve vigor and color, and more closely resemble the food found in the fish’s natural habitat. Live food is easily obtained.
Some drawbacks include the transmission of diseases or parasites to the aquarium, it is time consuming to maintain the cultures, and a lot of space needs to be devoted to raising live foods. The cost of equipment and supplies needed to maintain cultures is also a consideration for the beginner.
In this article I will discuss how to raise Daphnia. This article will be part of an on-going series on live foods. You can find many more related articles on http://www.kingdiscus.com.
Daphnia belong to a group known as the Daphniidae, and are close relatives of the freshwater shrimp, and the brine shrimp (Artemia). Their generic name is generally referred to as “water flea.” This common name is derived from the jerky movements of Daphnia in the water. The over 150 different species can be found in North America, with a similar amount of species growing in Europe. Some of these species find common ground on both continents.
Daphnia are a small crustacean, and are great to use as a fresh food because they will exist in the tank water until eaten by the fish. Daphnia can also be sterilized if it is felt necessary by placing in a 5% solution of Clorox for 3 to 5 minutes. Very few micro-organisms can survive this. Be sure, however, to rinse them thoroughly before feeding!
Daphnia can be raised both indoors and outside. Many people raise daphnia in a small children’s wading pool. A more controlled environment, however, is done indoors, and can be done year round if one lives in northern climes. This can be as simple as a couple of two liter bottles, to a 20 gallon tub purchased from a store such as Menard’s. The ideal situation is to have as much oxygenated surface area as possible, so if there is room for a larger container, by all means use it. A shallower environment suits daphnia best for prolific growth.
Setting up the environment for daphnia is quite simple. Many methods are used for collecting the water to use for the culture. The best advice I have heard is from Joe F. of Circle City Aquarium Club in Indianapolis, IN. He gave a presentation at the August meeting of Southwestern Michigan Aquarium Society, and recommends using tank water saved from a tank change. Joe has been raising live foods for a long time, and has had good success. His video presentation was top notch.
PH levels for successful Daphnia cultures should be in the range of 6-8, and should be more alkaline than acidic. If raised outdoors, no aeration is needed. If raised indoors, aeration should be adjusted to produce large bubbles. Small bubbles in the daphnia culture will cause the bubbles to become lodged in the carapace of the culture, and they will die.
Water temperatures for Daphnia magna are not a high requirement, but the optimal temperature should be in the 64-72 degree range. they are very tolerant to changes in temperature, and can withstand fluctuations down to freezing. In fact, Daphnia can be frozen and kept in the freezer, and then revived when needed. Moina withstand a higher fluctuation in temperature than do D. magna.
Lighting should be in the neighborhood of eight or more hours light per day and light intensity equal to or greater than 850 lux. A simple light and a timer can accomplish this indoors.
Feeding the Daphnia is where most aquarists fail. Daphnia feed on dissolved organic matter, yeast, various groups of bacteria, microalgae, and detritus, or mulm. Organic fertilizers, such as fresh cow manure. It is not recommended by our breeder, though, because of the antibiotics and supplements fed to dairy and beef cattle. A much better mixture is a combination of one tablespoon each of spirulina, soy flour, and active dry yeast, added to a pint of water. This mixture should be added so that the water is cloudy, but you are able to see the bottom clearly, and observe the Daphnia swimming in the culture. This mixture should be added carefully every two or three days, being careful not to over feed. At this time, you should see an abundance of Daphnia, and they can be harvested to feed your fish.
Harvesting is quite simple – simply use a small aquarium net, observing that the smaller Daphnia fall through the netting to grow further. In this way, the adults are harvested, and can be fed to your fish. The younger Daphnia can go on to produce still more fish food. Harvested Daphnia can be kept in the refrigerator for several days in clean water.
Daphnia are high in protein, and a very good diet for tropical fish. Some aquarists feed them exclusively. They provide up to 70% protein to your tropical fish, and are an excellent source of live food for the aquarium.
Much can be written on the culturing of Daphnia. this guide is only meant to help the beginner to live foods to establish a colony, and feed live food high in protein to their fish. A series of article on live foods is forthcoming, and can be viewed at http://www.kingdiscus.com.
About The Author
Alden Smith is a published author who has been publishing on the internet for 7 years. Visit his website, http://www.kindiscus.com, for articles, software, and other resources. This article is one of a series available at http://www.kingdiscus.com.
Written By: Alden Smith
It is a well known fact that feeding live food to your fishes will help them to grow better, show better coloration, and improve vigor. Fish love a variety of foods, and live foods are more closely related to what they feed on in their natural habitat. Although raising live foods can take up a small amount of space, and a bit of your time, the results in seeing your fish thrive are well worth it! Vinegar eels are basically fry food, and very easy to grow. They are not really eels, but are classified as a minute nematode worm (Turbatrix aceti. and feed on vinegar or acidic, fermenting vegetable matter. These tiny roundworms are bilaterally symmetrical, approximately .08 in. (2 mm) long, and lives for around 10 months with a minimum effort of care.
To cultivate, fill a gallon jar with a quart of undistilled apple cider vinegar, a quart and a half of aged cool tap water, and an apple cut into 6 sections. If your water is typically hard, increase the apple cider vinegar to a 60% ratio. Introduce your vinegar eel culture to the container, and cover with a piece of cloth, held in place by a rubber band to keep flies out of the culture.
The media will need to be replenished about once a month, due to some evaporation and loss from harvesting the eels.
Culturing the eels is very low maintenance, as they have no temperature requirements and a long life span. One consideration is odor, for the apple cider vinegar will smell a bit like a winery, and some may find it objectionable!
Be patient with the culture, as it may take up to a month for the culture to be strong enough to see the eels in large numbers. When you are able to see them in quantity, it is time to harvest and feed to your fishes.
Harvesting vinegar eels is perhaps the most challenging part of the whole process. The easiest way to accomplish this is to draw the eel laden fluid up with a small baster, such as is used for basting chicken or turkey. Transfer this liquid into a funnel lined with a coffee filter placed over the opening of the culture jar to return the excess fluid to the container. When you feel that you have harvested enough for a feeding, gently rinse the coffee filter under a stream of cold fresh water for several minutes. Swish the inverted filter in your tank, and feed the fishes. If feeding several tanks, swish the filter in a beaker of water, and feed the eels using an eyedropper.
Vinegar eels will stay near the surface of the water, so aren’t good food for bottom feeders. Surface feeders such as rainbowfish will benefit greatly from feeding vinegar eels, but a lot of cichlid fry are bottom feeders. This is why a variety of live foods is important to feeding fry.
If you do not feed vinegar eels on a regular basis, don’t worry. The culture will keep indefinitely for a year with little care needed. A couple of times per year, thin out the culture by using a coffee filter and funnel, remove about half the media, and replace with fresh media in the proper ratio. You can then gift a fellow aquarist with the culture to begin a vinegar eel colony of their own.
About the Author
Alden Smith is a published author who has been marketing on the internet for over 7 years. His website, http://www.kingdiscus.com, is a resource for articles, software and information on the tropical fish hobby. Visit his website for more information on live foods, tracking software, and articles on the tropical fish hobby, especially if interested in raising discus fish. Weekly articles are posted, along with updates for Fish Minder software.
Written By: Alden Smith
A balanced diet for your aquarium fish is essential to thier survival. Most of the commercially available dry fish foods are almost always unbalanced. In many cases, the vitamin content will gradually decline at room temperature and since majority of the dry food for tropical fish commonly used will only keep for about three months, it is always advisable to buy fish-feeds in many small packs rather than in one large pack. The feed could preferably be kept absolutely dry in a refrigerator. However, all fish appreciate a change of diet and will thank you for your consideration with more interesting behavior, better colours, and greater readiness to breed and better general well -being. This change of diet should be supplemented with live food; majority of which now come in irradiated freeze dried forms to make sure that they are disease free.
I will mention a few that could be found handy in some major aquarium shops and I will group them into two. And they are flake foods and freeze-dried foods
Flake foods
Most popular and highly recommended brands are Aquarian, Tetra, and Wardley. They are varying in cost and quality. Wardley is the least expensive among the three. However, the Aquarian and Tetra are richer in specialty flakes compare to Wardley.
Freeze-dried foods
You will also find freeze-dried foods available in aquarium stores. They are favorite foods for aquarium fish. They have single animal-ingredient like mosquito larvae, blood worms and Tubifex worm each. Aquarist should note that freeze-foods are not in themselves complete diet but they can be combine to flake food or other type of freeze-dried foods. We shall discuss more about Tubifex as a popular freeze-dried food.
TUBIFEX – This is a traditional favorite food relished by most fishes. They are small red worms that live at the bottom of streams and rivers particularly where large amounts of organic matter are present. Therefore, it is difficult for the aquarist to collect them life from their habitat. It is therefore preferable to buy Tubifex from pet shops where they are already clean, freeze-dried and concentrated into cube forms.
From personal experience, Tubifex tubes could probably be the most exciting feed to use for fishes. The cube can be stuck to the front inside wall of the aquarium. The fishes in the tank will immediately come forward and bit off pieces of worms excitedly until satisfied.
You need not bother to remove the rest worms since they seldom pollute and in most case fishes return to the feed for further fill.
About the Author
For more great aquarium related articles and resources check out http://fishfood.aquariumspot.com
Written By: Nathan Miller
