Live Food...blood Worms And Shrimp.

[divegirl]

Hi, is there any way of keeping these foods alive? I don't get to my LFS very often [not weekly anyway], so I was wondering if I could 'bulk buy' and keep them a live at home. I went to my LFS on Friday and bought a bag of blood worm and a couple of bags of brine shrimp, gave all my fishes a good feed from them and put the rest in a small holding tank with an air stone. This morning all the shrimp are gone[!]....eaten by the blood worm? There are still a fair few blood worm alive, but lots are dead [can I still feed these recently decessed ones?].
So is there a secret to keeping them alive?

Lisa x

'No...seriously!!!! Stop eating now!!!!!'

 

[indigoj]

get frozen works out cheaper in the long run.

never had much luck keeping live food alive longer than 1 day.

 

[divegirl]

I have frozen....but my fish....especially my 'lil' Puffs love the live stuff . How come it stays alive in those little sealed bags, but dies when you give it better conditions???

Lisa x

 

[saltynay]

Bloodworms can be kept outside in a bucket placed in the sun so that it is allowed to grow plenty of algae you will want to experiment with positions as if the tubs get too hot the bloodworms will die, not sure what exact conditions they need but seem to survive fine in my old water with water added directly from the tap or rain. To get a substantial colony growing is a chore, I mainly harvest daphnia and mosquito larvae from my live food colonies with a few blood worms sneaking in however they are established in the buckets and a scrape of the bottom yields quite a few but also causes a cloud of half rotten matter from the bottom to come up.

Brine shrimp cysts can be bought of ebay and brine shrimp hatchery guides are all over the net essentially 2L fizzy drink bottles and distilled water as far as I can remember.

 

[bagu]

nice fat DP

 

[divegirl]

nice fat DP

He's wicked ain't he!!!!!

Thanks Salty, II'll give it a go!

Lisa x

 

[lilacamy931]

If I get live bloodworm i keep them in a container in the fridge. They go dormant and will become active again upon warming up. Can still only keep up to a week with this method though.

Brine shrimp, you can buy the eggs and hatch when need (buy decapsualted much better apparently!) they are freaky little things. My brine shrimp from the store lasted about...4-5 days. They were all moving lots and lots, put some lettuce in for them (dont think ate but at least it provided cover) and then the next morning massive wipout not one alive. I think it will be trial and error but hatching your own may be best.

I feed the puffs mostly frozen and live things as occasional treat

that is one nice looking puff! have you names for him.her?

I asked about brine shrimp a while back here is the link:
http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=295137&hl=

havent got around to setting one up as happy with the snails for now.

 

[iSnail]

'No...seriously!!!! Stop eating now!!!!!'

Awww....

I don't go LFS often either. When I go, I get a few bags of live food and put them in separate plastic food storage containers and keep them on the warmest shelf in the fridge. They keep for about a week and a half (if they last that long that is ). I also change the water (dechlorinated) they are kept in every day or every other day. With adult brine shrimps, I use "salted" water and also I feed them tiny amount of dissolved dried yeast and spirulina powder every two or three days. Grown up DPs take no notice to baby brine shrimps (mine don't anyway )

Seriously, don't spoil them too much. I have a hard time with a few of mine who give me dirty looks when I give them frozen food as the live food run out

 

[cookiemistress]

I use dried blood worm and my fish seem to love it might see if i can get some live blood worm and see how they like that, will be more expensive tho. (guppy fry at about 1-2cm in size only fish atm with some ottos and cherry shrimp, guppy fry love blood worms)