Easiest live food for a beginner?

[fishboy]

Hello I currently have a 20 gallon long that I'm stocking with clown killis, shrimp and cpds. 

I've considered adding black tiger Dario too but I'm hesitant because of the live food requirement. I can get grindal worms but I've heard they along with other worms can cause bloating long term. 

For a beginner ( this is my first fish tank), would you even recommend darios? If so what live foods that are good for the dario would be easiest to culture. 

[Lennie]

On 12/2/2023 at 10:02 PM, fishboy said:

I've considered adding black tiger Dario too but I'm hesitant because of the live food requirement. I can get grindal worms but I've heard they along with other worms can cause bloating long term. 

@Guppysnail may help for your worm questions and about dario feeding. She also has cpds and shrimp.

I currently have daphnia, vinegar eels, white worms and I hatch bbs. I think they are all same level and easy. I would not worry about the hardness of a culture. More importantly try to focus on something you would utilise well based on your fish's size, interest and swimming level and the culture's requirement (feeding, where to keep, ideal temp, etc). I currently dont have microworms as they are smelly. All the ones I have have no bad odour. 

 

Edited December 2, 2023 by Lennie

[Guppysnail]

I would hold off on the Dario. They are not as hardy as others to withstand errors. They also need a well seasoned tank that has had plants establishing for at least 6 months or more in order to grow microfauna for them to eat. I’ve never had bloating in my Black tiger, Scarlet badis or Badis badis from worm feeding. However mine always got a high variety. Ostracods, copepods, white worms, grindle worms, live baby brine shrimp and a few others. Feeding only 1 or 2 live foods exclusively will cause health issues due to missing micronutrients. 
 

CPDs on the other hand I highly recommend.  They are a joy in several of my tanks.  Hardy in a cycled tank. Eat near any food you crush small enough for them. 
 

 

[Kit Craft]

From my perspective none of it is easy and it is all tedious, lol. But if I had to raise live food it would be daphnia because I can raise it with something like snails and or shrimp. Keeping just a food culture alive, to me, is a chore. But add plants and inverts and it is a project. So, for me it is a matter of perspective.  That said, I did BBS a few times and it is not too bad, but I'd still rather hatch and freeze as needed, lol. 

 

[veerserif]

I kept a banana worm culture for about a year before I got tired of it, but it wasn't *difficult*, just kind of tedious. I didn't have the number of tanks required to make it that worthwhile in the end. Starter came from Aquabid. I went with the cheapo oatmeal + cut up deli container method, pretty easy, you just have to be diligent about making new cultures when they start to really climb up the sides of the container. The fish really loved it, for what it's worth (at that time I had honey gouramis, lambchop rasboras, pygmy corys and shrimp + snails).

I do still have a BBS hatching dish and I'll do that once in a while but all I've got is a little 8gal nano now. I freeze leftover BBS and treat it like a frozen food for a while. Most live cultures produce too much food for my situation.

[JE47]

I kept a microworm culture that was fairly easy to keep personally I did not mind the smell it always kind of smelled like baked bread except when the culture needed to be restarted which it was nice that I could just smell it when it needed re culturing I'd also see less worms alerting me that the food was almost used up. But like @veerserif said I don't have enough fish that eat that kind of food to continually use it. Honestly, its up to you to decide I'd will be curious to know what you decide.