Keeping A Live Food Culture

carrera · Oct 8, 2008

Just wondering if anyone has any experience in keeping a culture of live food.

I'm looking to have a small, undemanding and low maintenance culture (I'd like to keep a culture in, say, a coke bottle, not a new tank) that will create a supply of yummyness for a single Betta. Would really appreciate it if someone could point me in the direction of any guides on the subject.

C.

Mikaila31 · Oct 8, 2008

Well it totally depends on what you want to culture. There's vinegar eels, microworms, grindal worms, daphnia, fruit flys, and the list goes on. You would be looking for a larger sized live food if its for a adult betta. All live foods normally require at least two different cultures going at a time, so that if a culture crashes you have a back up culture. I would suggest looking at common live foods that are fed to bettas, then search on how to culture them and figure out if you can do it or not.

I would suggest looking at daphnia. My betta seems to enjoy eating the larger adults. They are kinda fun to watch too, but they will need a container of a few gallons and a light to culture.

OldMan47 · Oct 11, 2008

I am doing a daphnia culture using a daphnia container and a green water container. The green water feeds the daphnia and the daphnia feed the fish. Basically I dump part of the daphnia culture through a brine shrimp net and down the sink. The daphnia go to feed some of my fish and the water in the daphnia culture gets topped back off with green water. The algae in the green water are cultured by using lots of bright light for 16 hours a day and the algae feeds on fish waste. The fish waste comes from partial water changes so I just drain a small amount out of one of my tanks and add it as makeup water to the green water culture. The decomposing stuff that comes out of my tank with that small water change gets with the bright light and grows more green water.
The cycle looks like this, take a cup or two of water from the daphnia culture and feed the daphnia to the fish. Feed the remaining daphnia a couple of cups of pea soup looking green water to replace the water I took out. Refill the 2 cups of green water culture from the bottom of my fish tank. Top the fish tank back off with a mini partial water change.
External inputs are makeup water to the aquarium and lots of light.

Colin_T · Oct 12, 2008

Daphnia, mozzie larvae, aphids & fruit flies are easy to culture and great food for Bettas. Daphnia has been covered already but mozzie larvae can be found in containers of water that have been sitting under a tree for a couple of weeks. The black wrigglers feed on bacteria that grows on rotting plant matter. Often containers with leaf litter will have huge numbers of mozzie larvae living in them. These can be scooped out with a net and fed off, or frozen for later use.
(*NB* it is illegal to culture mosquitoes in many parts of the world).

Aphids are found on roses and feed on plant sap. Once you get some put them in a plastic Coke bottle and put a plant stem in the bottle each day. The aphids will feed on that and reproduce readily.

Wingless fruit flies can be obtained from universities and some petshops. They can be kept in 2litre plastic bottles and fed on small pieces of fruit.