Something Interesting...

[love_fish]

I was looking up The Blue Ram on google, and I came across something pretty cool about making your own microorganisms for food. Here is what I read:

Put a lettuce leaf in a jar of water, place that into a sunny window. Within a few days the lettuce will look like something has been eating on it and the water will look kind of green this is a sign you have micro organisms in there. Just pour that into your tank they will eat them.

Is this true? Can this really work? Has someone ever tried this? I may give this a go with my guppy fry just to see if it works, but I dont want to mess anything up if this isn't true and ruin water quality or something.

P.S. the person who wrote that was talking about food for the babies.

 

[Tolak]

Infusoria, excellent for fry.

 

[love_fish]

Infusoria, excellent for fry.

So this will work out then?

 

[fishing4exotics]

You're just basically growing algae. I have had fry tanks that I let algae grow in. The fry take to the algae as their 1st food. Then I feed fry baby brine shrimp, yellow part of a hard boiled egg, and finely crushed flake food. You can also buy marine phytoplankton in a bottle to feed fry.

 

[dwarfgourami]

This is what everybody used to do in the days before the coming of commercial fry food. I remember it well. The inside of a banana skin is good too. And no, you're not just growing algae; tiny critters called infusoria start growing. You can get much the same effect naturally occurring in a planted tank.

 

[love_fish]

Hmnm, I'll give this a try then. Thanks guys for the feedback on it.

 

[sylvia]

Actualy, it isn't algae - it's tiny microorganisms that feed on bacteria. You have infusoria naturaly living in your tank - particularly if you have plants - but they are not enough to feed fry. When following the growing method you quoted, you are likely to first see the jar go cloudy-white. that's the bacteria. then it clears and looks green - that's the infusoria. I often use them to feed gourami fry because they are so very small when they hatch and things like egg yolk are messy. Most commercial fry foods also aren't much more than an infusoria food and you can use a few drops of that to grow them instead of the lettuce Guppies won't appreciate infusoria quite so much because they are born quite large - but they'll probably eat some anyway. Actualy, guppies would preffer something like microworms (if the tank ahs no substrate) or baby brine shrimp.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Oooh, cool idea you found love_fish! Thanks for sharing it with us, i think i might have a shot at growing some of this "infusoria" ...

 

[love_fish]

Yea, maybe I wont try this on my guppys, but if I decide to breed my cories, maybe I'll try it on them.