Brainstorm on natural colour enhancing (fry) foods

[dwarf-puffers]

i feedmy fish little pieces of orages i was told to do this by thelps ithought that the acid in the oirange would hert them but there fine

 

[Colin_BC]

I haven't forgotten about this thread. I haven't done any more experimenting on carrots yet, however I am currently trying to culture microworms using Heinz Organic Sweet Potato baby food and yeast. I started it last night and I can see the microworms are reproducing. Tomorrow we will have a better idea. I'm expecting the microworms on the sides of the plastic container will be a bit oragneish in colour form the sweet potatoes, and should start loading my apisto fry with beneficial colour enhancing betta carotenes from the earliest possible times. I'll update as things go (including on smell if sweet potato baby food works.

On another note, I picked up a nice moontail betta a few weeks back. It was a light powder blue in colour. I wish I took some pictrues when I first bough it (I almost always take an immediat picture beofre acclimating the fish), because now it's a dark blue/violet in colour. I have ONLY been feeding this betta Omega One Super Colour enhancing flakes. If I didn't know better, I'd think my betta died and someone replaced it on me...

Colin

 

[troutfly]

I don't know if anyone has told you or not but "boiling" vegatables removes vital nutrients that come naturally in them.To soften them up, I would steam them instead of boiling.

I just wanted to add my 2 cents in on this great thread.

 

[Colin_BC]

Yes, I know boiling does remove nutrients, but it doesn't fully deplete them. I use raw cucumber, but raw carrots I figure would be too hard and crunchy for most my fish. However I can't rule out raw carrots since I haven't tried them yet.

I hadn't thought of steaming them. It seems logical enough, though. I can try that out down the road. Thanks for the interest in the thread.

Colin

 

[ccg]

Past few days it has been warming up lots and since I live out in the sticks there are tons of insects everywhere.

Anyhow, I toss a dozen house fly's into my tank about a week ago and the fish went insane for them (the gold and tiger barbs). I also tried mosquitoes and they love them as well.

I have noticed a huge difference in the colours of all my fish within the past week. Everyday I have been tossing a few insects in the tank and they eat them faster then I have ever seen them eat before. My gold barbs have turned more of an orange colour, and the tiger barbs have a deeper colour overall. Also my cherry barbs have been looking a lot better. The problem is I also added a 3 rd filter a week ago, along with lots of drift wood, so the colour changes might be a combination of things. I am trying to dig up some pictures of these same fish so I can take new ones and post the difference, I know I have them somewhere.

Anyways, not sure if it is related to the insects I have been feeding them or maybe the better water due to the filter. They have also been eating carrots about 1-2 a week, so who knows, very un-scientific, but something I’m doing seems to be working.

As for the post about the fish not liking them, in my experience they loved them, but then again I do own a tank full of barbs, and I’m sure they would eat anything that was given to them. They would eat all day if given the chance.

 

[Colin_BC]

Update on Microworms cultured with Heinz Organic Sweet Potato baby food and yeast:

I first tried this with a couple spoonfulls of the baby food in a small plastic container with a pinch of yeast. To add a starter culture of microworms I put a couple drops of water in another MW culture and swished it around, then poured the little bit of water (now loaded with MW) into the potential sweet potato culture. Within a couple days you could see they were definately reproducing at a good rate. Problem was that MW produce extra liquids in the culture, and the baby food was a bit liquidy to start. There was enough moisture in the culture that the MW couldn't climb the sides of the container to be harvested. Time to adjust the plan....

On my second attempt at this I tried the same as above, however I immediately tried using paper towel to suck out some of the excess moisture. This worked a little, but only temporarily. Some MW climbed the sides to be harvested, but not a lot. There was still to much moisture in the culture (and yes, there are holes in the lid).

Next, instead of using more paper towel to get the moisture out (and temporarily at that), I put a 1 sq." piece of bread in the middle of the food. The next day, and since, the MW are all over the sides of the container, plus they are orange from the Sweet potato. All my fish eat them with no ill effects so far. It also doesn't seem to pollute the water any more than MW harvested on plain white bread would.

Below is a pic of the culture a couple days after adding the little piece of bread. the bread is near gone. Next time I'm just going palce some bread in the container and then spoon some baby food and yeast onto the bread and allow it to be soaked up before adding the MW's.

Colin

 

[wuvmybetta]

Interesting indeed I'm always looking for a good gut load for my fry food, so I may try this. Just so you know, you can mix liquid vitamins for small animals like birds or rabbits into your food source as well. That's what I do.

As for the liquid you could also try mixing corn meal with the baby food to give it more substance.

By the way,that daphnia culture failed miserably. I haven't ever tried them again

 

[Colin_BC]

Interesting indeed I'm always looking for a good gut load for my fry food, so I may try this. Just so you know, you can mix liquid vitamins for small animals like birds or rabbits into your food source as well. That's what I do.

As for the liquid you could also try mixing corn meal with the baby food to give it more substance.

By the way,that daphnia culture failed miserably. I haven't ever tried them again

Thanks for the reply. I was wondering what happened with your daphnia when you mentioned giving that a shot. I'll have to look for the liquid vitamins. I like that idea. As for the excess liquid, another thought I had was to get wheat flour and use that to soak up the excess moisture. I read At this site here a good article re culturing microworms on different mediums, including the white bread method I typically use. It says that wheat flour is best long-term medium for culturing MW's, as well as th wheat flour providing the MW's with a higher fatty-acid content. Below is a quote direct from the link above.

Research has shown that the type of culture medium used has a dramatic influence on worm yields. One such trial was conducted using three mediums - wheat flour, oatmeal, and cornmeal. Yield of worms in wheat flour was significantly greater than in oatmeal or cornmeal. Production of worms stopped after day 20 in cornmeal, day 33 in oatmeal, and day 53 in wheat flour. The addition of yeast during initial media preparation was found to have no effect on worm yields. However, the addition of yeast on a weekly basis to the wheat flour medium gave a significant greater yield of worms than did untreated wheat flour. Wheat flour is mixed with water to form a smooth paste and placed in a suitable container. After inoculation with live worms, the addition of 5 ml of a yeast solution, consisting of 7 gm baker's yeast dissolved in 70 ml water; is lightly sprayed over the medium every 7 days. More recent studies on enriched media for microworms has shown encouraging results. Microworm grown on wheat flour plus w-yeast contained a higher percentage of fatty acids.

Colin

 

[Colin_BC]

Update: I have only been culturing MW's lately using the sweet potato baby food with a bit of bread (to absorb excess moisture) with no problems. My main culture right now has been running for a couple week. I add a little bit of bread as I see more moisture building up. I have added a tiny pinch of yeast once only, however I've seen similar results in MW production with plain bread without yeast. Either way, it's giving me adequate microworms that are a nice orange in colour from the baby food.

A week or so ago I was at a fellow fish-geek's place and I was telling him about my method of culturing microworms (he provided me with my first culture). He told me he adds a tiny bit of spirulina powder to his MW cultures (he uses oatmeal). he gave me a little baggy of the powder to try out. I initially tried sprinkling a little bit on the culture, but it's hit and miss as it doesn't disperse easily. Just a few minutes ago I decided to try mixing a bit of the spirulina powder directly to the jar of baby food. I used the tiny scoop that comes with Hagen's Iron test kit and put 2 level scoops of spirulina powder in the 1/3-full jar of baby food and gave it a good shake. The result is a dark green colour. I'm going to setup a new culture using this spirulina/sweet potato mix. It should be great for gut-loading the microworms.

More updates to follow.

Colin

 

[wuvmybetta]

Awesome, I love how you're getting so into them.One of my favorite past times is fiddling with white worms, they're awesome too. You should try and get ahold of some if you want to really have fun , they're pretty big but you can feed the young one's to baby fry. They're meatier than the microworms. I've tried so many different foods for them with them but I've had the best results with soaked,mushy rabbit food. I've been meaning to try the sweet potatoes, I just never think to buy them when I'm out. Synirr told me that she started giving hers mushed fish food, so I started mixing it in with the rabbit pellets and the worms multiplied even quicker than usual.
white worms..

I trap them and dip this in a cup of water,the food stays intact and the worms rinse off..

I waited to long to take the pic and the light made them scatter back down into the dirt..aren't they cool?!

I wonder if they'd turn orange with sweet potatoes. I think I'll pick up some spirulina flakes too. Thanks for the tips!