Feeding Your Aquarium Fish Natural Live Foods. The main reason to use Life Fish Food is to help your fish live longer, healthier lives. Life Fish Food is also a great way to help your fish get the nutrition they need to survive and thrive. Prepared foods are more convenient and less expensive, but Live Fish Food has several advantages over prepared foods. Live Fish Food often costs more and is messier to work with, but it is worth it because it provides high protein levels, allows for a varied diet, fills the gaps left by flakes, and is essential for breeding fish. Captive fish that regularly consume live prey have longer lifespans, brighter coloration, larger sizes, and general positive wellbeing.
Use life fish food to keep your fish healthy and happy. Life food contains all the essential ingredients your fish need to thrive and grow. It is also easy to use, requiring only a small amount each day to feed your fish. You can choose from a variety of flavors that will suit everyone’s taste buds. Keep life food in your tank at all times for the best results!
Not All Fish Eat Flakes
Wild-caught fish are more likely to refuse food offerings such as flakes. To feed your pet fish, start small with a chunk of food at a time and gradually increase the amount over time. Overfeeding is dangerous for pet fish and can lead to constipation and other issues.
Higher Nutritional Content
Live Fish Foods are more nutritionally complex than prepared foods. Higher nutritional content comes from the food you feed them, as well as the Live Food itself. Feeding Guppies or Ghost Shrimp flakes gives the fish that eats them the flakes plus the nutrition they gain from their Live Food.
Encourages Natural Behaviors
Giving pets a stimulating environment helps improve their mood and behaviour. Enabling natural behaviours in fish encourages active feeding behaviour and can provide entertainment for aquarists. Use live fish food cultures in the home aquarium to encourage natural behaviors. Live fish food cultures help keep your home aquarium clean and healthy. Fish love to eat live food, and this will keep them happy and healthy in your home aquarium.
Best Food for Fish Fry
Live food is important for fish fry. There are several types of live food that can be cultured and grown in your home.
1) Hatching brine shrimps from eggs
2) Cultured Daphnia, baby Brine Shrimp, Microworms, and even single-celled organisms like Green Water Algae and Paramecium can be cultured with ease.
Live daphnia are the perfect food for mature aquarium fish.
Culturing live microworms is a great way to feed small fish fry and juvenile fish.
Live daphnia can also be used as the primary food source for large, mature aquarium fish.
Mosquito larvae are excellent food for fish fry.
Live foods will help keep your fish fry healthy and alive.
Avoid using commercial feeds that contain pesticides or other harmful chemicals. Mosquito larvae are a sustainable, organic source of food for your fish fry!
Common Types of Live Foods & How to Raise Them
There are two types of live foods: fresh and frozen. Fresh foods are foods that are alive and in the process of being consumed. Frozen foods are foods that have been frozen and are ready to be eaten. There are many types of live fish foods, including brine shrimp, worms, and new hatched nauplii. Live food can be used as a supplement to commercial diets or fed to all stages of life in aquariums. When feeding live food to your aquarium fish make sure they are familiar with the different types before offering them as a regular diet.
Live food for aquarium fish provide a high nutrient content that is not altered or affected by processing. Live food can be used to deliver extra vitamins to your fish when fed as gut-loaders. Some drawbacks of live foods include the higher price and potential for disease transmission. Feed your fish small amounts of live food at a time to prevent intestinal problems. Vary the types of live food you offer your fish to keep them entertained and healthy.
Brine and Fairy Shrimp
Brine and Fairy Shrimp are similar in care but differ in habitat. Brine Shrimp live in saline environments while Fairy Shrimp are freshwater creatures. Fairy Shrimp hatch into baby shrimp that are just as nutritious as Live Fish Food. Brine and Fairy Shrimp are live food for young fish. Brine and Fairy Shrimp reach maturity in 4-8 weeks, depending on the species. You will need to prepare a “yeast soup” food solution using yeast, sugar, and powdered fish flakes for your young Brine or Fairy Shrimp Nauplii.
Tubifex and Blackworms
Tubifex and Blackworms are aquatic Annelid, or segmented worms in the same phylum as common Earthworms. Tubifex are tolerant of a wide range of water conditions and are often found in sewer lines, polluted streams, and farm runoff. They can survive even in environments with nearly no dissolved oxygen thanks to their thin skin and hemoglobin-rich tails that they wave in the water column to breathe.
Their ability to uptake molecules directly through their skin makes them potentially harmful if fed to fish but the vast majority of Tubifex in the trade are farm raised so there’s little need for concern. When purchasing Tubifex make sure the entire bunch is bright red and actively moving about. As they die Tubifex turn pink and then white. After death they decay so rapidly the entire colony can die within hours as bacteria and rot spreads.
Blackworms aren’t as common as Tubifex but are another excellent Live Fish Food. Blackworms aren’t as tolerant of poor water and are usually found in clean shallow water environments. They also live in colonies in sediment and muck and will colonize aquarium substrate, feeding on bacteria, fish waste, and other detritus. Blackworms are slightly larger than Tubifex and will also readily regenerate if an exposed portion gets nipped off by a passing fish. Tubifex and Blackworms are easy to raise, but care must be taken to keep the culture clean. Tubifex and Blackworms can be raised in any aquarium, provided there are places for them to hide and a substrate to eat. Tubifex and Blackworms will consume anything organic, including vegetables, fish waste, corpses, pellets, and flakes.
Water Fleas
Water fleas, also known as daphnia, are small aquatic crustaceans that can be easily cultured in a water tank. They are commonly found in temperate regions and are more common in young fish. Daphnia will consume other small aquatic creatures and can help to clean the aquarium or filter. They need warm water (between 64-72 degrees Fahrenheit) and plenty of plant cover to reproduce successfully.
Infusoria
Infusoria are microscopic organisms that can be found in water anywhere in nature. They can be raised from an aquarium using water and a piece of lettuce. Infusoria are excellent food for small fish fry and other Live Fish Foods.
Live Fish Food Cultures for Aquarium Fish
Fish food culturing can be used for raising baby fish, stimulating the hunting instinct, or to bring fish into breeding condition. Live food is natural, high in protein and usually nutritious. Fish keepers and breeders have been culturing live food for their fish and other aquatic pets since the hobby began.
Green Water – Tiny Newborn or Culture Food
Green Water is suspended algae. Culture: The most common method is to add grass clippings to water, add a bit of plant fertilizer and place the mixture in a well-lit location – preferably in front of a window or outside in the Summer. Be careful with the fertilizer if you intend to feed the culture directly to the fish tank of fry as it can cause a build-up of phosphates. You can also use snails or Microworms to feed Green Water culture instead of fertilizers. Culturing Microworms couldn’t be easier by comparison to other live foods. Worms can be scraped off the sides of a tank to determine if they are culture food for new baby fish. Worms can also be fed directly to new baby fish as culture food. Care must be taken not to add the food mixture with the worms, or it will foul the tank.
Infusoria – Newborn Fry Food
To feed newborn fish, Infusoria must be used. Infusoria can be obtained from a local pet store or online. To start an Infusora culture, you will need a jar and food of choice. Apple Snails ‘produce’ infusoria in their feces – they work with their digestive system to digest food and help keep your fry tanks clean
Paramecium
Paramecium are cultured quite differently from Infusoria. Paramecium feed on bacteria and will proliferate in tank water if provided food and brewer’s yeast. Paramecium can be harvested in a couple of weeks or so using a large eye-dropper or turkey baster.
Vinegar Eels – Tiny Newborn Food / Transition Food
Vinegar Eels can be used as a transition food between micro-cultures (such as Infusoria) and BBS. They can stay alive in fresh water for weeks. Culture: In your container of choice, add 1/4 – 1/2 of an apple. Fill the container about 3/4 of the way with a 50/50 mix of water and Apple Cider Vinegar. Harvest: The Vinegar Eels will be ready to harvest in about a month. Use a turkey baster or eye-dropper to bring the Eels out of the culture and squirt them into a coffee filter placed in a funnel or small strainer. Gently rinse the Eels a couple of times in the filter, and then swish the filter into a container of water. Feed using a turkey baster or eye-dropper.
Microworms – Newborn / Transition Food
Microworms are a food between the size of Green Water and Brine Shrimp. They are often recommend for Rainbowfish as a starter food, but any newborn fish will enjoy them, in my experience, including small newborn Livebearer fry. Culturing Microworms couldn’t be easier by comparison to other live foods. Prepare some oatmeal and/or baby cereal to keep them in. After experimenting I decided on a mixture of both. Top it off with a bit of active yeast, and mix it all up with some water until it is very moist. Stir in a little extra-virgin olive oil to increase the culture yield/growth, as well as to benefit the fish it’s fed to through a higher amino acid content and improved vitamin profile.
Add your starter culture, place a ventilated lid on the container, and place in a cool area. In a week or two there should be plenty of wiggly worms on the sides of the container. Supplement with finely ground seaweed/algae if you wish. Harvest: Use a cotton swab, Popsicle stick, etc, to scrape the worms off the sides. You can either drop them into water and extract them with an eye-dropper, or feed directly. Be careful not to add the food mixture with them though, or you’ll foul the tank
BBS – Baby Brine Shrimp (Artemia) – Fry Food
Baby Brine Shrimp (Artemia) is fry food. BBS are shrimp larvae which are hatched into salt water. Culturing isn’t difficult, but it is a little more involved than the other starter foods. You can purchase BBS hatcheries or build your own using DIY instructions found online. The basic items include an air pump, airline tubing, your hatchery of choice, non-iodized salt, Brine Shrimp eggs and a Brine Shrimp net (which doubles as a great net for fry).
Measurements may vary, but basically you add 1/2L of water, get it bubbling using the pump/airline tubing, add 1/4 tsp of Brine Shrimp eggs & 1 TBSP of non-iodized salt. Brine Shrimp eggs take about 24 hours to hatch. When they are ready, stop the pump and siphon the shrimp into a brine shrimp net or cheesecloth. You use the siphon to both remove and separate the Shrimp from the hatched eggs. Empty the BBS into a container of fresh water and use an eye-dropper or turkey baster to feed.
