Feeding tropical fish fry can be difficult due to their tiny mouths not fitting most of the prepared foods you may have available and an excellent water quality environment.
At such an important stage in their development, providing infants with the exact nutrition that they require is crucial to ensure full growth on all fronts.
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Paste Foods
Fry need high-quality foods that are small and moving quickly in order to thrive, with only limited time available before they die from boredom. Luckily, several high-quality, low-cost live foods are readily available to aquarists that can serve as staple diets for young tropical fish.
These ingredients are usually ground, mashed or pureed and combined with some type of liquid to form a thick-textured paste. Sometimes unflavored gelatin may also be added to help it hold its shape more securely while making feeding less messy.
Hobbyists commonly raise brine shrimp eggs themselves to provide their fry with this highly nutritive food source. After 24 to 36 hours, hatching of the eggs produces tiny baby brine shrimp which provide excellent starter food for most species of fry – they contain protein and other essential vitamins needed for proper development of health fish. When the fry are ready to move up to larger meals like infusoria, micro worms or vinegar eels.
Flake Foods
Flake foods are among the most beloved food choices for tropical fish. Ideal for providing convenient staple nutrition to small and medium-sized community fish species like livebearers, they come from many quality brands in a range of sizes and colors such as crisps, colour enhancing flake and green vegetable flake specifically formulated to satisfy herbivorous species. In most cases these flakes come sealed against air and light so as to maintain their artificial vitamins from being destroyed due to exposure.
Commercial flake foods for fish are ground to a fine powder that easily passes through their mouths, and can be sprinkled across the aquarium surface. Some are made with whole wheat flour as an additonal source of roughage and nutrients, while others use fish protein digest as an economical way to boost protein values in their food. You can make your own flake food by steaming, pressing, and drying fish or hard vegetables until they reach a size suitable for fry feeding.
Live Foods
Although many hobbyists now rely on high quality commercial foods to nourish their fry, live food remains popular for some species. Live food provides superior levels of nutrition necessary for creating healthy fry.
Daphnia are one of the most frequently consumed live foods for fish, offering an easy method of raising and feeding in any stage of aquarium life. They provide essential protein sources and essential fatty acids essential for fry growth.
Chaetophagous rotifers, another highly nutritious live food for fry, are another tasty choice when raising them at home. Similar to infusoria but larger and shaped more like wheels when spinning through the water, these microorganisms are easy to culture at home and breeders often combine both types of live foods together when raising fry – often mixed together with flake or pellet fish food as part of an easily digestible and nutritional diet for their fry.
Infusoria
Infusoria refers to an array of microscopic aquatic organisms found in aquarium trade environments, including algae, euglena, paramecia and amoebas. Rotifers (non-photosynthetic species) make an excellent food choice for young fry.
Brine shrimp nauplii are much smaller, making them the ideal food source for feeding to newly hatched fry. Culturing your own supply is relatively simple by collecting some water from an established tank with filtered water and filling it into a glass or plastic jar.
A jar should be left somewhere warm for at least two to three days before every five to six hours using an eyedropper or turkey baster, the small amount of infusoria present should be collected using an eye dropper and added directly into your fry tank.
