Live Foods

[madmom]

Does anyone collect and store their own live foods? If so what type of food and how do you store them? My LFS's don't carry anything except brine shrimp eggs and food for larger fish such as Oscars. I have small fish.

 

[Qays]

Live food isnt that important as the nutricious value of flake is adequate, i wouldnt worry too much, but its nice to have live food sometimes. You could try freeze dried foods like, freeze dried bloodworm.

 

[Liam]

I have a few big buckets scattered around the garden and a wildlife pond. If you have outside space, it’s easy to have mosquitoes, daphnia and bloodworm. Just put some vegetable peelings in a bucket of water, a few live daphnia will start a population. Flake and frozen foods are an adequate diet but the fish love chasing live foods and always prefer them to flake. I wouldn’t collect live foods from rivers or lakes due to the risk of introducing disease.

 

[moeldner]

My brother gets his feeder fish from the national park near his place to feed his oscar. (mosquito fish I think)

Before anyone complains - The fish he catches are considered a destructive pest, and it is illegal to release them in the national park waters anyway (even if you catch them there). So he is doing a service for other inhabitants of the area.

 

[BigC]

You can cultivate certain types of livefoods yourself.
Regards
BigC

 

[SirMinion]

Live food isnt that important as the nutricious value of flake is adequate, i wouldnt worry too much, but its nice to have live food sometimes. You could try freeze dried foods like, freeze dried bloodworm.

That's great for those species that will each processed or dried foods, but many more specialist fish such as puffers won't touch it.

For them, live or frozen food is the only option.

I occasionaly collect my own pond snails and earthworms but mostly I buy them from pet stores, fish stores or bait shops.

 

[heather]

my fish catch there own live food hahah i remember opening tank lid 1 day and some kind of fly/insect went ontop of the water the oscars jumped for it ,, they eat it all up whatever it was ,, now they are wanting more of it ,, dunno what though ?

 

[SamUK]

if i ever see the odd moth in my room i throw that in the tank and it flys about (well, trys) in between the plastic cover and the water surface.

then my chalceus grab it

 

[heather]

hahah yeah we get them coming in and they go toward the tanks because of the lights then the fish follow it along the side with there mouths wide open they are really wanting to catch them hahha , fish are great

 

[madmom]

Looks like I'll have to grow my own then. I took a 2 hour trip to the nearest big town and still only found crickets and brine shrimp eggs. I'll hunt the internet for live food starter kits and check by the spring for daphnia. I set a bucket down there also to attract mosquitos. Thankx peeps.

 

[yvez9]

I feed live crickets that i buy frm the store

the only live food I harvest are pond snails because they live in the smaller tanks and when I see a few near the surface i collect them and feed them to the oscar and clown loaches

I'll also throw in bugs I catch inside and live earthworms I buy from the bait shop

 

[jayjay]

I have grindal worm and micro worm cultures for fish food also feed live daphina and bloodworm sometimes. Also have feed live brineshrimp a few times.

I would like to try and culture blackworms but can't find them at a reasonable price Also are blackworms the same as tubifex worms?