I've made some excellent frozen foods, using soldier fly larvae, shrimp and veggie ingredients. My fish are either insectivores or detritivores, so I don't have to worry about veggie food directly.
This all well and good, but my freezer is in the house, and my fishroom is in a detached garage 30 metres away. When I go out on these cold mornings, I keep forgetting to snap off a hunk of my carefully prepared food. Once I'm in the fishroom, the idea of going back through sub zero temps is unappealing. I never bother with a coat or jacket for such a short distance, but...
I hatch out baby brine shrimp 5 times per week - along with energy it's the main cost for the room. They work out to 30 cents a day, for 30 tanks. I also have multiple white/grindal worm cultures in boxes along the floor, and have been culturing wingless fruit flies for my hatchet fish. As the cultures have been working, I've been feeding all 50 tanks with live most days - rotating the foods. About every fourth or fifth day I remember to thaw some frozen, and I do have black soldier fly pellets, ground up fly larvae and flake for specific uses. My corys get some pellets. Surface oriented fry get some floating dried food, and so on.
My disorganization is paying off. I have some Epiplatys huberi killies I caught in 2023 as adults, who were starting to look old. On a straight live food diet, they've regained lost weight and are starting to look like the young they've produced again. I can identify the individuals up close, but from a distance, they look like the younger ones in shape and colour. Prepared foods weren't doing it..
Wingless fruit flies have drawbacks. They live for a long time on meadows of floating plants, and the fish hunt them slowly as they get hungry. I don't get mad rushes to the food when I feed those tanks. Rather, I see a visible brightening of the fish, and a hyper alert body language as they begin to look for careless flies. That's good. But some flies always crawl up the glass and out - an issue in a house, but not in a garage with pitcher plants. Yesterday, I restarted cultures and since I re-use containers, I had to deal with the odour of old culture media. It's nasty, not for in the house. Outside in Canada, it freezes fast and the smell goes away.
Once every one to two weeks, I take 20 minutes and make new fly cultures. I take 5 minutes and make a microworm culture, which I haven't needed since the corys haven't been breeding. The whiteworms get fed kitten food (dried but sprayed with water) every second or third day when I harvest. Brine shrimp's regular, at minutes a day.
Live food is something to explore. It can cost to start, but once it's rolling, it's cheap and VERY effective.
This all well and good, but my freezer is in the house, and my fishroom is in a detached garage 30 metres away. When I go out on these cold mornings, I keep forgetting to snap off a hunk of my carefully prepared food. Once I'm in the fishroom, the idea of going back through sub zero temps is unappealing. I never bother with a coat or jacket for such a short distance, but...
I hatch out baby brine shrimp 5 times per week - along with energy it's the main cost for the room. They work out to 30 cents a day, for 30 tanks. I also have multiple white/grindal worm cultures in boxes along the floor, and have been culturing wingless fruit flies for my hatchet fish. As the cultures have been working, I've been feeding all 50 tanks with live most days - rotating the foods. About every fourth or fifth day I remember to thaw some frozen, and I do have black soldier fly pellets, ground up fly larvae and flake for specific uses. My corys get some pellets. Surface oriented fry get some floating dried food, and so on.
My disorganization is paying off. I have some Epiplatys huberi killies I caught in 2023 as adults, who were starting to look old. On a straight live food diet, they've regained lost weight and are starting to look like the young they've produced again. I can identify the individuals up close, but from a distance, they look like the younger ones in shape and colour. Prepared foods weren't doing it..
Wingless fruit flies have drawbacks. They live for a long time on meadows of floating plants, and the fish hunt them slowly as they get hungry. I don't get mad rushes to the food when I feed those tanks. Rather, I see a visible brightening of the fish, and a hyper alert body language as they begin to look for careless flies. That's good. But some flies always crawl up the glass and out - an issue in a house, but not in a garage with pitcher plants. Yesterday, I restarted cultures and since I re-use containers, I had to deal with the odour of old culture media. It's nasty, not for in the house. Outside in Canada, it freezes fast and the smell goes away.
Once every one to two weeks, I take 20 minutes and make new fly cultures. I take 5 minutes and make a microworm culture, which I haven't needed since the corys haven't been breeding. The whiteworms get fed kitten food (dried but sprayed with water) every second or third day when I harvest. Brine shrimp's regular, at minutes a day.
Live food is something to explore. It can cost to start, but once it's rolling, it's cheap and VERY effective.
