Live foods provide additional nutrition, encourage natural feeding behaviors and can help balance out the diet of your fish species. Some have specific dietary requirements which may be difficult to meet solely with commercial flakes and pellets.
Many live food options are easily available and cultured at home with minimal effort, including daphnia, infusoria, worms and shrimp. This article will discuss some of these possibilities such as daphnia, infusoria, worms and micro worms.
Contents
Daphnia
Daphnia are essential food source for many aquarium fish species and can easily be raised at home with the necessary equipment. As these photosensitive creatures need constant lighting, chlorine-laden water sources should not be provided as this would kill them off over time. Instead a dechlorinated reservoir should be created where they can live peacefully in.
Regular water changes should also be performed to decrease phosphorus levels and to keep Daphnia populations high. When too few phosphates exist in a culture, reproduction will cease and the culture quickly collapses; Daphnia must molt their outer carapace in order to grow larger as with other crustaceans.
Infusoria
Infusoria are tiny aquatic micro-organisms that provide food for small fish fry. Culturing Infusoria at home is easy and they can serve as an interim food source until new egg-laying species mature sufficiently and need other foods as food sources.
Start your own infusoria culture by filling a jar with room temperature water (preferably dechlorinated or plain bottled water) along with some old dried leaves, and placing the jar in direct sunlight. Aquarium debris may fall into your jar containing microorganisms that aid the infusoria’s survival.
Once your jar has become clouded with infusoria, harvest it by sucking out any liquid using a turkey baster and feeding the infusoria to your baby fry as part of their regular food regimen. This is an excellent way to familiarize them with eating live food!
Worms
Fairchild from the experiment station’s Fairchild is conducting experiments on white worms as potential food sources for cultured aquatic species, saying they show great promise. “Their versatility shows great promise,” she adds.
These annelid worms can be grown easily in soil. They thrive in both fresh and salt water environments, can be fed directly to fish without impacting aquarium water quality and do not impact aquarium environment at all.
These tiny crustaceans, commonly referred to as banana worms, can easily be grown at home for providing nutrition to small fry and juvenile fish. Their feeding process utilizes nephridia which filter coelomic fluid while eliminating waste molecules accumulated in their bodies through coelomic tubules. Furthermore, their transparent bodies blend seamlessly with any substrate they are placed upon.
Shrimp
Shrimp are carnivorous and omnivorous sea animals that can be eaten by most fish species. They commonly feed on plants and aquatic organisms like other shrimp; humans also enjoy eating them!
Freshwater species like goldfish, tetras and cichlids typically enjoy feeding on ground-up shrimp pellets or flake food; for larger predatory fish such as water fleas (daphnia) or brine shrimp are available as live foods.
Food for fish can be purchased in jars from most pet stores or created yourself by hatching brine shrimp eggs or raising daphnia in a tank. Offering these types of foods will add variety and stimulate natural feeding habits in fish.
Ostracods
Ostracods are crustaceans characterized by two part, hinged carapaces that enclose their entire bodies. Ostracods may be classified as predators, herbivores or scavengers depending on the morphology of their shell and soft parts – predatory behaviour typically being predominant when found in marine environments where fish from both freshwater and marine habitats prey upon them.
BugLady has read stories of Japanese sailors during WWII reading their charts by the light cast by bowls filled with bioluminescent ostracods known in Japan as Umi-hotaru. Additionally, these ostracods can also be transported on birds’ feet or even the backs of toads! In addition, these bioluminescent organisms can endure drought conditions.
Frozen Food
Frozen foods offer an appealing way to add variety to your fish’s diet without compromising its nutritional value. Frozen foods typically consist of whole ingredients that have been flash frozen to maintain their original nutrients while simultaneously killing any bacteria they may contain. Common examples of frozen food options for your aquarium include brine shrimp, daphnia, blackworms tubifex worms and krill; there are even frozen products formulated specifically for certain fish types such as brine shrimp.
Frozen food can be an excellent way to supplement a flake or pellet diet for fish who are finicky eaters, making a diet rich with variety the cornerstone of good health and longevity. Keeping aquarium fish fed a varied diet is vitally important to their wellbeing and longevity.
