Easiest live foods for smaller fish, particularly tetras

[Magnum Man]

I have 2 predominantly tetra tanks, one African, and one South American , and all are doing well, but there is always an urge to do better… I do feed some frozen foods, and I have noticed, that the very small palmeri’s and rummy’s have to pick and choose small pieces out of the brine shrimp cubes, same for the African’s, both tanks have other fish that will eat the bigger pieces (dwarf cichlids, and angels in the South American tank, and the 3 lined glass cats in the African tank) … I’m really pressed for time, so the “easiest” part of the title is important… I do have a brine shrimp hatchery, that I bought a while back, that I haven’t had the time to get going yet… so baby brine shrimp… anything else that would be easy, not time consuming, and would be palatable to small fish???

 

[AJ356]

See this is where I struggle. I don't have a suggestion, and I stick with frozen. I don't the like the idea of live food unless I've cultured it myself. This is going to sound lazy, but there there is literally only so many hours in a day. I find culturing live foods to be too much hassle for too little outcome. The only thing I would do again is moina for fry or very small fish. But even with the moina which is ordering powder, I still found the hassle versus volume produced ultimately not worth it.

 

[gwand]

I have 2 predominantly tetra tanks, one African, and one South American , and all are doing well, but there is always an urge to do better… I do feed some frozen foods, and I have noticed, that the very small palmeri’s and rummy’s have to pick and choose small pieces out of the brine shrimp cubes, same for the African’s, both tanks have other fish that will eat the bigger pieces (dwarf cichlids, and angels in the South American tank, and the 3 lined glass cats in the African tank) … I’m really pressed for time, so the “easiest” part of the title is important… I do have a brine shrimp hatchery, that I bought a while back, that I haven’t had the time to get going yet… so baby brine shrimp… anything else that would be easy, not time consuming, and would be palatable to small fish???

Hikari micropellets or microwafers. My CPDs and juvenile dwarf platys like this.

 

[Magnum Man]

As far as prepared foods, I have a dedicated motar and pestle, and “dust” all kinds of foods…I also feed Bacter AE ( which is dust ), and after witnessing even large fish, trying to suck in as much of the Bacter as they could, gave me the idea of “dusting” other foods… I particularly do it for bio film eaters, my Oto’s, Pleco’s. & Hillstream’s, as well as the smaller fish… this also makes me assume larger fish will also benefit from sucking in micro live foods as well

 

[Naughts]

Daphnia in an outdoor tub with a fly net over it (to prevent mosquito breeding in the water but that is an alternative food source if they are controlled and/or disease free). My daphnia are self-populated but you can buy them to start you off. I harvest once a week in summer.

 

[Colin_T]

Newly hatched brineshrimp, Daphnia, mozzie larvae, micro and grindal worms.

If frozen foods are too big, use a pr of scissors to cut the food into smaller pieces. Use bigger foods first to fill up the bigger fishes, then chop some food up for the smaller fishes.

 

[anewbie]

Sadly the only frozen food available around here are bloodworms which are not a good diet for most of my fishes

 

[Colin_T]

Sadly the only frozen food available around here are bloodworms which are not a good diet for most of my fishes

Do you have a supermarket that sells fresh or frozen seafood?
If yes, buy some frozen prawns and use a pr of scissor to cut them into little bits for the fish. Take a prawn out of the freezer, defrost it, remove the head, shell and gut (thin black tube in body) and throw these bits in the bin. Then use a pr of scissors to cut the remaining prawn tail into little bits and offer a few pieces at a time. feed until fish are full and remove uneaten food.

You can do the same thing with white bait or any white flesh fish or even blue sardines, squid, etc.

 

[anewbie]

Do you have a supermarket that sells fresh or frozen seafood?
If yes, buy some frozen prawns and use a pr of scissor to cut them into little bits for the fish. Take a prawn out of the freezer, defrost it, remove the head, shell and gut (thin black tube in body) and throw these bits in the bin. Then use a pr of scissors to cut the remaining prawn tail into little bits and offer a few pieces at a time. feed until fish are full and remove uneaten food.

You can do the same thing with white bait or any white flesh fish or even blue sardines, squid, etc.

I tried that with shrimp; actually purchased fresh unfrozen since the frozen one were cooked; it isn't really good for dwarf cichild which is the bulk of my stocking but i did feed it to the loaches; the black ghost knife fish went crazy for it but no one else would touch it. In the geo tank (wc blue rams and geo) no would touch it at all - not even the L171a (vampire pleco that like snails).

Not sure if there is a big difference in prawns or shrimps.

 

[Magnum Man]

We had a drought year last year, and I inadvertently have lots of things around the farm, that hold water… it wasn’t a problem last year, this year is a flooding year, and I’m going around dumping them ( and mosquito larvae, out ) we have a record amount of mosquitoes here this year.. I could probably go around, with a fish net, and make a couple swishes, before dumping, frankly I’m a little worried some will go unnoticed, and hatch out in the house ( our only mosquito free zone ) and I’d expect Mrs. would have a cow, if she thought I was bringing mosquito larvae in the house… think I’ll skip those, even though they sound easy to do…

 

[Colin_T]

I tried that with shrimp; actually purchased fresh unfrozen since the frozen one were cooked; it isn't really good for dwarf cichild which is the bulk of my stocking but i did feed it to the loaches; the black ghost knife fish went crazy for it but no one else would touch it. In the geo tank (wc blue rams and geo) no would touch it at all - not even the L171a (vampire pleco that like snails).

Not sure if there is a big difference in prawns or shrimps.

There's slight differences in shrimp and prawn but nothing to concern fish keepers.

Any fish I have offered prawn to, eat it and that includes dwarf cichlids.

There's nothing wrong with cooked prawns and they are actually safer to use because they won't transmit microsporidian infections, (if the prawn has it). Raw prawns can transfer this disease.

 

[Colin_T]

We had a drought year last year, and I inadvertently have lots of things around the farm, that hold water… it wasn’t a problem last year, this year is a flooding year, and I’m going around dumping them ( and mosquito larvae, out ) we have a record amount of mosquitoes here this year.. I could probably go around, with a fish net, and make a couple swishes, before dumping, frankly I’m a little worried some will go unnoticed, and hatch out in the house ( our only mosquito free zone ) and I’d expect Mrs. would have a cow, if she thought I was bringing mosquito larvae in the house… think I’ll skip those, even though they sound easy to do…

Collect the mozzie larvae up and freeze them in ice cube trays or small buckets and feed them to the fish later on.

 

[Magnum Man]

I actually just bought a couple of silicone small square ice cube trays, I might have to dedicate a small fish net, to outside use, and go around, and scoop up some next weekend ( running out of time this weekend ) I suppose they should be lightly rinsed in RO water, and packed as densely into the small cube tray as possible, before freezing… I’m thinking I’m going to try that.. anything I can do, to reduce the number of mosquitoes outside, and give the fish more variety

 

[Magnum Man]

@Naughts … I did look into Daphnia cultures… assuming they need a somewhat mature bucket or??? Outside… I was reading they can be fed spirolina algae powder… do we think they’ll survive in a tank in doors, if fed algae powder???

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I messed a bit with hatching BBS and also with red wiggler worms. I gave it up as it was just more work I did not want to be doing. I use frozen instead and it is almost as good. I have had enough fish that I need to purchase frozen usually twice a year and in 12 - 15 pound quantities. Most of what I buy I can get in slabs from 1 pound to one kilo which lowers the cost.

I used to feed cyclop-eeze until the only lake where they were bred had the population crash. They were unable to get it restarted. So I just had to buy other cyclops which recently have been harder to buy in bulk. I also feed frozen rotifers and frozen daphnia to smaller fish. I do keep a couple of BBS cubes on hand, but they are too costly to feed reguarly as they do not come in slabs.

I nk\ormally have to feed both fry food and adult food in my pleco tanks as tiny plecos can choke to death trying to eat bigger foods. I normally drop in the smller food and then the adult food. But I notice that the adults will suck up the fry food as well. But once it hits the water the brine, mysis and blood worms become the prime target for the bigger fish. The big guys will also gobble up the finely ground Ebo Aquaristik brine I feed to the babies. Fortunately, the babies can eat the sticks and other solid foods I feed as they get soft in the water and the kids are able to eat this stuff easily once it gets soft. They just scrape off what they want.