Where Do You Purchase Your Live Food?

Livewire88 · Dec 5, 2011

Hello,

As per title, just wondering where everyone purchases live food?

My LFS only gets live food in every now and then and I would like to feed my fish live food more often, can I buy any at a reasonable price on the web? and if so I assume it is best bought in bulk, if so how long can I keep live food before it dies off? :good:

Tizer · Dec 5, 2011

i rarely if ever feed live food so its a non issue for me. frozen bloodworm is about as exciting as it gets, or the odd small earthworm from the garden.

snake007 · Dec 5, 2011

Ebay has some reasonable prices I believe.

creeker · Dec 5, 2011

Unless you have a ton of fish, the cost of having the live shipped to you would not be worth it. You don't really need to feed live food all the time (except for certain fish), so if I were you, I would just feed it when your lfs has it in stock. Most types of live foods don't really last all that long in storage. Another option would be to collect some yourself. I find it fun, but do get some strange looks as a 50+ year old man on his hands and knees scooping gunk out of suspect looking water with a medium sized tank net. :blush:

Livewire88 · Dec 5, 2011

I have a bucket in my garden wich has some rain water in the bottom, its been out in the garden for a few months and has some "blood worm" looking things in the bottom of it, they are alive so could I feed them to my fish? :drool:

The last thing I want to do is poison them :-(

CezzaXV · Dec 5, 2011

I asked at my LFS and they claim that the live foods they sell will last about 3 days if you keep them in the fridge. Obviously this is LFS advice, so you take this at your own risk.

Louiseness · Dec 5, 2011

You could always breed your own, I know a few people on here do that.

Livewire88 · Dec 5, 2011

Louiseness said:
You could always breed your own, I know a few people on here do that.

I get the p*** ripped out of me enough by the mates for keeping fish, if I start breeding worms I think I will have to stop going out!! :lol:

three-fingers · Dec 5, 2011

I rarely manage to get fresh live food, so every couple of months I order a bag of live brine shrimp for £3.99 off eBay.

Feels very steep for brine shrimp, but the bags are slightly bigger and because they are always sent out on the same day they are fresh - usually not a single dead one.

I then add the whole bag to a jar of 30ppm saltwater on my cool windowsill and put in a small amount of spiriulnia powder (£1 off eBay) about an hour before feeding some to the fish (this gut-loads them for more nutrition).

The jar lasts until they are all used up, usually a couple of weeks for me - I only use them for finicky feeders like killifish and bettas, 2 or 3 shrimp per fish every day. They will even breed and theres usually BBS hatching every few days.

Other than brine shrimp, I just collect daphnia and mosquito larvae from my tiny pond in the summer, and in the winter it's always full of copepods

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Next spring, if add a handful of leaves to a large tub of tankwater and leave it to sit in the garden all year round, you'll have a free supply of live-food :good:

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snake007 · Dec 5, 2011

Free delivery on ebay

Livewire88 · Dec 5, 2011

I just checked the bay and 1 seller is selling 10g of Brine Shrimp Eggs for £1.99 posted.

It says "The winning bidder will get 10g of 90% hactchable eggs (millions) in a strong reasealable bag"

Buy 3 bags get 1 free

fish48 · Dec 5, 2011

Livewire88 said:
I have a bucket in my garden wich has some rain water in the bottom, its been out in the garden for a few months and has some "blood worm" looking things in the bottom of it, they are alive so could I feed them to my fish?

The last thing I want to do is poison them

feed them to your fish they will go mad for them live blood worm is a very good food

AbbeysDad · Dec 5, 2011

creeker said:
Unless you have a ton of fish, the cost of having the live shipped to you would not be worth it. You don't really need to feed live food all the time (except for certain fish), so if I were you, I would just feed it when your lfs has it in stock. Most types of live foods don't really last all that long in storage. Another option would be to collect some yourself. I find it fun, but do get some strange looks as a 50+ year old man on his hands and knees scooping gunk out of suspect looking water with a medium sized tank net.

Just look up a little wild eyed and say "much cheaper than tuna fish" just to mess with 'em ....works for me! lol