The following is a list of commonly available live foods for your fish.
Live foods are more nutritious than the frozen or dried equivalent, and are a must for some species of fish for full conditioning.
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Bloodworm
A midge larvae which is taken by just about all fish, even the so called herbivorous species, bloodworm can be found at many fish & pet stores. You may also find jumbo bloodworm (shown on the left) which is much much larger. Bloodworm are also sometimes sold at fishing tackle stores as fishing bait.
Bloodworm do not feed on blood.
Expect to pay 30p to 60p per portion.


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Brine shrimp (Artemia)
Also sometimes known as 'SeaMonkeys' newly hatched brine shrimp are the staple diet of many tank bred fish fry and can be hatched by the fishkeeper in a home hatchery quite easily. Adult brineshrimp can be bought from your local fish store and are ideal for all fish.
The brineshimp we buy is 'enriched' which means it has been fed on a vitamin rich diet.
Expect to pay around 50p per portion.


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Daphnia
Sometimes called 'Water fleas' and available from your local fish store. Can also be harvested from any still body of water but be careful of unwanted parasites and other pests.
Most fish will take daphnia.
We pay around 40p for a portion.


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Glassworm
Smaller than bloodworm making it suitable for juvenile fish & filter feeders such as violet gobies.
Less often found at your fish store and a little more expensive at around 90p per portion.


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Microworms
Another tiny worm ideal for fry. Microworms are usually sold as a 'do it yourself' culture which you grow at home. I've never come across them myself, so I have no idea on price.


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Vinegar Eels
A tiny aquatic nematode worm, not an eel. They are found naturally appearing in vats of vinegar. They make excellent food for fry of nearly all species of aquarium fish, and the adults of small fish like tetras and minnows love them too.
They live longer in the aquarium than Microworms and also can be home cultured although they are rather complicated to harvest (You don't want to put vinegar in your tanks!)


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River shrimp
A larger shrimp getting up to two inches long. Ideal for predatory fish and especially puffers. Not very easily available as a live food, but if you're lucky enough to have a local fish store that does them, expect to pay 60p to £1 for a portion of around 30 to 50 shrimp.
These shrimp go opaque pink when dead and must be removed from the aquarium as they foul the water very quickly.
The nutritional value of the shrimp is quite low but can be boosted by feeding algae wafers to the shrimp before feeding the shrimp to the fish.
As the shrimp are a coldwater species, they are best kept in outdoors or even in a fridge untill they're ready to be fed to your fish.



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Snails
Often available from your local fish or pond store for FREE! snails are an essential part of the pufferfish diet and a treat to many other fish such as botia species (loaches)
Avoid giving Malaysian trumpet snails as the shells are very hard and can break puffer's teeth. Go for ramshorn snails or common pond snails.
We buy large ramshorn snails from our local pond centre for £2.50 per five snails. Still looking for a cheaper alternative!


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Waxworms
Actually a moth caterpillar and sold in small pots in the reptile department of your pet store. Waxworms are eagerly eaten by most predatory fish. Our Gachua Snakehead, Jethro, loves them. They cost around £2.50 for a pot which contains around 30 grubs.


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Mealworms
This 'worm' is actually a beetle larvae and will be found in the reptile department at your local pet store and sometimes at bait shops.
It's available in regular or giant sized.
Larger carnivores such as cichlids, puffers and bichirs will gobble these down with enthusiasm as a nice crunchy meal.
A word of warning about the giant mealworms. If swallowed whole, these larvae have been known to eat their way through the stomach lining and kill the fish. It's best to either stick to the small variety, or behead the large ones before feeding. (don't worry, they still wriggle).
We pay £2.50 for a box of regular mealworms.


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Crickets
Look in the reptile section of your pet store. Crickets come in various sizes and colours from 'micro browns' to 'jumbo blacks' and are favoured by insectivorous surface feeders such as Arowana, archer fish & African Butterfly Fish.
Expect to pay around £2.50 for a boxfull.


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Earthworms
Extremely nutritious and available in every size. can be fed whole or chopped. Most carnivore & omnivore fish will chow down with gusto.
You can collect them yourself, one method is to spread a towel on the lawn at night then soak it with a hosepipe. Wait an hour then lift the towel and collect the worms. Be sure that the worms have not been in contact with toxins such as fertilisers and pesticides.
If in doubt, buy farmed worms.
Those of us in the UK can buy them online at Worms Direct


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Feeder Fish
Feeder fish are 'low quality' fish sold in fish & pet stores as live food for other animals such as snakes, turtles and piranha.
Most commonly they are plain guppies, rosey reds (shown below) or common goldfish.
Feeder fish are usually mass bred in poor conditions and are often suffering from deformities from inbreeding and disease from poor water conditions so be careful and always quarantine the feeders before introducing them to your aquarium.
In the UK, it may be illegal to use live fish as food, but elsewhere they are quite commonly available.
Also in the UK, it's illegal to sell or keep rosey red minnows without a licence as they are a threat to our native fish species should they find their way into our rivers and watercourses.

Rosey red minnows.

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Hope that's been helpful

excellent! thanks a TON for that info very useful!

i don't know where you live but those food that you stated are certainly nto commonly found around here only thing i can find are wax worms, meal worms and crickets

do you think meal worms are too big for a regular sized betta to eat? how about gouramis? what about wax worms?

and for earthworms, can i buy them from a fishign bait store?

I'd say mealworms are too big for bettas, but ok for adult gouramis, same with waxworms.

Try your bettas on micro crickets, I'll bet that they'll love 'em!

Yep, bait stores often have good old earthworms, but tend to keep the big ones like nightcrawlers. But you could always chop them up (eww)

micro crickets..i want to live where you live! no i've never seen microcrickets here before, just small ones...and the small ones are about .5 inch to 1 inch

my gouramis are about 1.5 - 2 inches, how big are wax/meal worms?

waxworms are about 2cm long, regular mealworms about 3cm. Too big for your fishies, I'd say.



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hmmm tha'ts too bad

what about teh earthworms? any ideas if the ones i get from a fishing store will be good? i know my mom uses fertilizers and sutff on the lawn so ic ant' take it from there

the ones in a fishing store comes in a little container with soil in it.

Sometimes you can find red worms in a bait shop. They're much smaller than crawlers.

BTW, great thread SirMinion.
I think a mod should pin it.

Just have a look to see how big they are. If they're too big, just chop 'em up!

i thought about that, how long can earthworms stay alive after being cut to pieces?

i'm guessing i can't cut them lengthwise right?

i'll check out the bait stores, maybe some of them will have some other kind of worms besides earthwroms

Very Professional looking thread, and very helpful, I was just asking my LFS for live Blood Worms and Brine but he said that there not as popular anymore. Hurmm, needless to say I was disappointed…

wow good topic, I think it deserves pinning
and all these replys should be split from it.

SirMinion; great thread. between you and Danio, there'll be no need for the main forum, as all the info will be there!!
Seriously though, I fed my fish the giant bloodworm once forgetting that as well as the big fish I had neons in there as well. Funniest thing ever watching a neon trying to eat a bloodworm that was almost as big as he is!! All the others were chasing him around the tank trying to get it from him, but he wouldn't let go!!!

Just one thing that is incorrect is that you said jumbo bloodworms are sold as jokers, it actually the other way around. Jokers are the small bloodworms that most people use to feed their fish and anglers use as feed, the jumbo sized ones are the bloodworms and the really big ones are known in angling circles as "super hookers". Having been a mad keen match angler and manager of a angling shop for a year this is just some of the useless information that gets lodged in your brain


Other than that its a excellent thread, i'll let it run a little longer so it can recieve a few more replies and once it dies down i'll clean it up by removing the replies and lock it.

Heh, I'm just going by what our LFS sells them as...Bloodworm & Jumbo Jokers. I've never bought them from a bait shop, but an angling friend of mine says he's bought jumbo bloodworm for fishing.

I guess the two hobbies have different naming conventions!
I've edited the bloodworm info to make it less ambiguous.
Thanks for pinning it!

Thank you! I took most of the pictures myself!

Great thread, Maybe I'll go to a baitshop and get some worms for my leaf fish

incidentally, the bright red colour from which they get their name is because they have a lot of haemoglobin to enable them to survive in oxygen-depleted waters.

that's my useless fact of the day, hope you enjoyed it.

you can actually order live crickets online that are quite small. they are usually referred to as "pin head" crickets (because theyre about that size...). many places will also sell 1 and 2 week crickets which are about 1/8 to 1/4 inch. since crickets only live usually 6-8 weeks, i order this size for my anoles. the first weeks they have to eat little guys, but the crickets last me longer (since most places you have to buy a minimum of 500, some go as low as 200, but 1000 is a norm). this may or may not work for most, as i doubt anyone has a large number of insectivorious fish, but if you have lizards too, then its a great deal.

just wanted to throw that out there.