Feeding Fry

[jasong8301]

Vinegar eels, baby brine shrimp, egg yolk, crushed fish food....ive heard a lot of things being used, what is the best in your opinion and is there an alternative to using hatcheries??? im nearing the end of my conditioning so i wanna make sure i have the right foods ready, so if you can tell me what you personally do, or maybe what u have heard of, let me know, it would be a big help, i wanna try and avoid setting up a hatchery thanx a lot guys and gals!!!

 

[Synirr]

Setting up a hatchery is pretty much unavoidable if you want healthy fry. BBS are generally said to be the most nutritious food for young fry. You can also start a microworm culture, which will work great if your hatcheries aren't doing so well one day for whatever reason, but I read about a breeder who tried feeding nothing but microworms for the first few weeks (5, I think it was,) and he had high fry mortality rates and slow growth, so they're obviously nutritionally lacking. The fry need live food in the first few weeks to trigger their instinct to eat... they generally won't go after anything that isn't moving. A week or two ago I started feeding my fry decapsulated brine shrimp eggs without hatching them first, and apparently they were old enough to eat non-moving things at that point, because they gobble the eggs up no problem. I've been feeding primarily the decapsulated eggs for the past week and haven't seen any ill side effects. Everyone is still growing at a steady rate and I haven't seen any fry with swimbladder disorder or anything like that

BTW... I promise, the hatcheries aren't as big a hassle as you think. Just fill them with dechlorinated water, add salt, a pinch of baking soda to get the pH right, and the eggs and you're good to go. It takes less than 2 minutes, and to harvest the shrimp all you have to do is turn the air pump off and shine a light on the hatchery for them to gather around.