Vinegar Eels - are there hidden downsides?

[Chris]

Hey yall,

So I've been on the baby brine shrimp hype train for several years now. I haven't hatched it out every day or anything, but I've had a hatchery around for a long time. I find that it keeps my fish kind of next level happy. 

I've used vinegar eels twice - once, when I was raising some Pseudomugil Cyanodorsalis fry, and I set up a culture recently to use with ricefish. I'm finding them to be an essentially 0 maintenance food culture that teeny tiny fry LOVE, and while their size makes the use cases limited... I'm wondering why I don't see more breeders raving about them. As long as you have more than one culture, theyre constantly available (as opposed to BBS, where you really need more than one hatchery or container to keep them around 24/7) and you can keep them in a closet for months with no maintenance. Is there a downside? Do fish that eat them end up with 3 heads or something? Lol!

Here's a picture of my largest culture - an old vodka bottle with apple cider vinegar and bits of an apple I put in back in January. Definitely time to reboot it with new feed, but still!

[Lennie]

The downside is, fry barely show interest towards it in my experience. I just see it as an extra food source for my fry between fry food feedings until they are ready to eat live bbs. Since they last long in the freshwater and dont spoil the water and easy to culture, it is a good choice between fry food feedings. Hardly well accepted tho

[Chris]

On 5/11/2024 at 11:31 AM, Lennie said:

The downside is, fry barely show interest towards it in my experience. I just see it as an extra food source for my fry between fry food feedings until they are ready to eat live bbs. Since they last long in the freshwater and dont spoil the water and easy to culture, it is a good choice between fry food feedings. Hardly well accepted tho

Interesting... my experience is the opposite. They tend to react really well to them for me - they wiggle around enough that it draws their attention. Not as much as BBS, but certainly more than a dry food. 

[T. Payne]

I've used vinegar eels for years for starting out rainbowfish. I believe the only downside is that bbs is more nutritional and once your fish get to a size where they can eat bbs, then the transition should be made.

[Chris]

On 5/11/2024 at 1:38 PM, T. Payne said:

I've used vinegar eels for years for starting out rainbowfish. I believe the only downside is that bbs is more nutritional and once your fish get to a size where they can eat bbs, then the transition should be made.

I agree. I find that fry much larger than a newborn platy don't take the eels as well - its the tiny fry that they're so useful for. 

I had several batches of Cyanodorsalis fail until I tried these eels. It did the trick!

[tolstoy21]

I use vinegars eels a lot. The downside . . . the amount of room the bottles take up as compared to something like banana worms.

I use vinegars (and banana worms) as a bridge between paramecium and baby brine for tetra fry.

[Odd Duck]

On 5/11/2024 at 10:31 AM, Lennie said:

The downside is, fry barely show interest towards it in my experience. I just see it as an extra food source for my fry between fry food feedings until they are ready to eat live bbs. Since they last long in the freshwater and dont spoil the water and easy to culture, it is a good choice between fry food feedings. Hardly well accepted tho

I think some of the acceptance rate is due to where the fry are swimming.  Vinegar eels tend toward the top of the water column so fry that stay low might ignore them completely. Fry that tend to stay higher in the water column tend to accept them better.

Vinegar eels raised in high density cultures don’t seem to carry as much vinegar with them when harvested and I think that helps acceptance, too. They also don’t take up any more space than banana or microworm cultures.  Adult fish as big as ember tetras or Kubotai rasboras also accept them well.  Maybe not as well as BBS but they still will dart around after them and their bellies will fill up. My eyes are no longer sharp enough to see them actually eat the tiny eels when they disperse in a larger tank (vs. being concentrated in a fry tray) but I can still appreciate their feeding responses and full bellies. 

[Chris]

On 5/11/2024 at 11:08 PM, Odd Duck said:

I think some of the acceptance rate is due to where the fry are swimming.  Vinegar eels tend toward the top of the water column so fry that stay low might ignore them completely. Fry that tend to stay higher in the water column tend to accept them better.

Vinegar eels raised in high density cultures don’t seem to carry as much vinegar with them when harvested and I think that helps acceptance, too. They also don’t take up any more space than banana or microworm cultures.  Adult fish as big as ember tetras or Kubotai rasboras also accept them well.  Maybe not as well as BBS but they still will dart around after them and their bellies will fill up. My eyes are no longer sharp enough to see them actually eat the tiny eels when they disperse in a larger tank (vs. being concentrated in a fry tray) but I can still appreciate their feeding responses and full bellies. 

I guess that would be where my inexperience comes in - both species I've used them for have been primarily surface-dwelling. 

Good to know!

[Schuyler]

They're harder to produce in mass volumes like brine shrimp

That's the only main downside. That and harvesting them can be is tricky