First food

[itiwhetu]

This most probably has been done before but here goes again.

The best possible first food for egg layers especially gouramis and tetras etc is boiled egg yolk.

First hard boil an egg, take only the yolk, put into a piece of cotton cloth like a handkerchief . Push it through into the tank.

You are aiming for a cloud to form as in the photo. The other photos show you what it looks like. When you wrap it up just dunk it in the tank to moisten and squeeze.

It will keep for about a week in a closed container in the fridge.

The reason this is so good. It is high in protein. Because of the cloud the fry have no choice but to eat it as they swim through the cloud. Plus it stays suspended in the water for a long time.

 

[mbsqw1d]

What food would you say is required to initiate spawning? Is it generally live food? My cories last spawned after feeding live daphnia, and we had some stormy weather at the time

 

[itiwhetu]

I have always liked frozen blood worm. But of course live food is best, the problem with live food is knowing its source, if you can trust where it has come from live food is always best.

 

[mbsqw1d]

I have always liked frozen blood worm. But of course live food is best, the problem with live food is knowing its source, if you can trust where it has come from live food is always best.

Yeh I keep some Daphnia in a small container. I didn't use the original batch I got from the lfs as food, but allowed them to go through several life cycles whilst keeping their container clean, which gave me some confidence that I knew they were free of anything nasty before using as food. I'd like to hatch some brine shrimp but just haven't got round to it yet

 

[itiwhetu]

The only issue I have with Daphna only is the protein content, that is why I like blood worm. But you are doing exactly what I would do. After years of using brine shrimp I went off the idea because of the salt content, not something freshwater fish would come across, mind you they don't come across egg yolk either.

 

[mbsqw1d]

Yes I've never picked up brine shrimp from the lfs because of the salt actually... so I'll probably look into something else. I remember cycling a tank once and just sort of left it for quite a while as I couldn't afford fish straight away. After a while it was full of copepods. No idea where they came from. The day I added the cories they had a feast!

 

[itiwhetu]

I had a very heavily planted tank once and in the morning there would be micro worms everywhere they would disappear during the day. Always thought it was because the oxygen level of the tank would go down just enough during the night to drive them out of the gravel.

 

[itiwhetu]

Foot note to Egg yolk

I was thinking about where I learnt this method. There was a guy in my home town called Bill Peck, he was known as the best fish breeder in town, us kids used to hang around his place. He was in his eighties then, passing on secrets before he passed away. This was one of them. I have used this method ever since. I recon between the two of us there must be near a hundred years worth of fish raised using this method. Just to the members of this forum who think egg yolk is bad for fry check your bought fry food ingredient list you may be surprised at what you find.