What live foods have you, do you, or will you use and why?

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

I have had no success keeping daphnia going long term, I have vinegar eels cultured for extended use, I hatch live baby brine regularly the COOP setup Ziss hatch and COOP eggs, and had recently added peanut beetle larvae. 

Vinegar eels and BBS : fry rearing and adult conditioning 

Peanut beatle larvae : conditioning adults, occasional superfood

What live foods do you use?

What live foods do you want to use in the future?

When and why do you use them? 

Edited July 22, 2021 by mountaintoppufferkeeper

[Nordlys Fish Room]

I occasionally catch wild scuds from an (mostly) unused gravel mine at work. I also sometimes scoop caddisfly larvae out of the creek bordering my backyard and I’ve gotten some fairy shrimp and mosquito larvae out of some temporal pools that show up in my backyard in the springtime.  Every mosquito I swat in the house ends up in a fish tank as well. 

I avoid putting anything in a tank that looks like it could fly away later. 
 

I've failed at a daphnia culture before. There’s a few things I’ll try differently next time I attempt it. 

Edited July 23, 2021 by Nordlys Fish Room

[Eddie Dingle]

I occasionally feed my fish baby brine shrimp and microworms. Both are easy to keep so those are my go to live foods. 

[Guppysnail]

Years ago anything collected in the creek. Mostly all of my younger fish keeping the fish i kept came from local creeks/ponds. Recently baby brine shrimp..fry. extra as environmental enrichment for adults for adults I just ordered a starter culture vinegar eels for fry environmental enrichment for CPD and new panda Cory. 

[Odd Duck]

I have vinegar eels, microworms, white worms, blackworms, and very neglected wingless fruitfly cultures (pea puffers were not the slightest bit impressed by the fruit flies).  I also have bladder snails, ramshorns, and mystery snails.  The bladder snails and sometimes young ones of the rams and mysteries get fed to pea puffers.  I also collect amphipods from my shrimp only tanks at least weekly and sometimes more often.

I plan to get some Grindal worms soon to fill the size gap between the microworms and white worms.

I’ve failed at Daphnia cultures x 3, but I’m going to try them again in a dedicated tank since that was my best attempt.

I started to grow live cultures because of the pea puffers, but definitely feel it benefits other species - getting picky eaters to eat more reliably, adding more variety to the diet, and works especially well for bringing fish to breeding status.  I also wanted to have very tiny foods for small puffer fry, primarily, but now plan to use them for other fry, of course.

I have the hardest time using the snails as food, especially mysteries, but, . . . . pea puffers.  Mostly I sell the rams and mysteries.  It doesn’t bother me to feed amphipods, Daphnia, any of the worms, or the fruit flies, but the fruit flies are soooooo annoying to collect and feed.  They are much too buoyant!  I dump them into a cup with some tank water and swirl them around until they stop floating.  Otherwise they crawl out of the tank and all over stuff in the fish rooms.

I've contemplated growing some red wigglers for my Jack Dempseys, but I need to get a few to test if they will even like them (they *love* white worms!).  I’ve grown red wigglers for composting before, it’s not that difficult although it does take just a little practice.  It could be done in a pretty small space for just the occasional worm for the pair of Jacks I have.

[Andy's Fish Den]

Right now all is Use is BBS, I regularly hatch a batch a couple times a week, more often if I have fry growing. I also have microworms and regularly get live blackworms. I have tried daphnia several times but have failed every time. I think it is because I don't feed enough because I am afraid to overfeed and kill the culture, I have tried to grow green water to feed the daphnia and I can not get it to grow in my fish room. I do have a tub outside this summer that is full of green water, so I have thought of getting a starter culture and just using that and seeing if I can get the green water started downstairs using some that is in the tub. I have also tried vinegar eels, but I had a hard time seeing the eels and then collecting them to feed the fishes, so I jsut gave up on them. 

[Odd Duck]

@Andy’s Fish Room I’ve been known to stack 2 pairs of reading glasses, one inside the other, to see the tiny vinegar eels.  I’m old!  😆 

If you use a bottle with a fairly long, straight neck, and do the wad of floss/cotton ball (I tied a thread to mine) collection method it’s much easier than pouring through a filter and rinsing method.

I try to keep the vinegar right at the bottom of the neck, push in the floss to where it just touches the vinegar, then pipette clean tank water to about 1/2” above the floss and leave it overnight.  The water should go from clear to cloudy with the eels.  Pipette out to collect the top layer of water and eels (it will have a bit if vinegar mixed in) and feed to your fry.

You can repeat this for several days in a row, but it will get less cloudy with time (less eels) and you should stop and let the culture recover.  Remove the floss via the thread you tied on (trust me, it’s worth using the thread/string) and squeeze back in whatever you can of the liquid and any eels out of the floss.  It’s worth keeping at least a couple cultures going  if you do a lot of breeding and always have fry (I’ve never come even close to this) or just as insurance against a culture crash.