Soldier Fly Larve

[Oldspartan]

Linda purchases Black Soldier Fry Larve by the large bag at Tractor Supply for her bird garden. These are freeze dried and labeled as chicken treats. They are perhaps an inch long and "dust" easily.

Suitable as treats for tropical fish? I am thinking yes but want confirmation before I abduct some from her hoard.

 

[CassCats]

They'd be good. Fluval Bug Bites is based off black soldier fly larvae

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I have a number of foods that contain soldier fly larvae. That said I cannot comment on the form you are buying as I have no clue on what it might contain. But the fact it is sold as food for chickens should be a good sign. However, I would want to know if their is an ingredient list for it. I would want to be sure that if something beneficial was added to them which is good for chickens but might not be good for fish is not the case.

4 soldier fly larvae foods from kensfish.
https://kensfish.com/search?q=soldier+frly&x=0&y=0&options[prefix]=last

These are the first 5 ingredients for the Rapashy Bottom Scratcher which I feed my plecos and corys: INGREDIENTS: Krill Meal, Black Soldier Fly Larvae Meal, Mussel Meal, Squid Meal

These are the first 5 for the Repashy Soilent Green which I feed to my aufwuchs feedeing plecos and other fish eat them as well: INGREDIENTS: Spirulina Algae, Algae Meal (Chlorella), Krill Meal, Pea Protein Isolate, Black Soldier Fly Larvae

So the fly feed is good for the fish. I have also fed the Fluval Bug Bites but wasn't impressed by their ingredients vs. the Repashy. But soldier fly is the 1st ingredient for the Bug Bite variety I tried which is a good thing. I must have 20 or more different foods I feed so there is a limit to how many more I can use.

I feed 3 Repashy foods, 6 frozen foods, 6 Ebo Aquaristik foods and I make my flake blend from several of kensfish flakes. I also use my own blend of his sinking sticks- earthworm, blackworm, brine shrimp, soldier fly larvae and veggie. I also use his veggie sticks with calcium added for snails and shrimp. I have been feeding less and less kens since I began using the Ebo foods.

 

[Magnum Man]

I bought a bag long ago... I also got a cheap coffee grinder to "break" them up to bite sized pieces... I suspect there is a fair amount of fiber getting the larvae whole like that... my fish loved them, but it was a mistake for me... living in a 100 year old farm house... I constantly battle with farm mice, in this old house, and the mice went crazy for them, and chewed a hole in the bag, and in a week, emptied the whole bag out, now, we don't have that many mice, as we have a trap line, like I said above, the mice went crazy for them and stock piled them everywhere... and they have an odor, that attracted the mice...

 

[Oldspartan]

I bought a bag long ago... I also got a cheap coffee grinder to "break" them up to bite sized pieces... I suspect there is a fair amount of fiber getting the larvae whole like that... my fish loved them, but it was a mistake for me... living in a 100 year old farm house... I constantly battle with farm mice, in this old house, and the mice went crazy for them, and chewed a hole in the bag, and in a week, emptied the whole bag out, now, we don't have that many mice, as we have a trap line, like I said above, the mice went crazy for them and stock piled them everywhere... and they have an odor, that attracted the mice...

I can understand that living in a similar house. We have licked the mouse problem regarding food in general with a cat. She gets the occasional mouse in the basement during the late fall. Plus all bird food is stored outside in small tin cans with tight lids. Linda is meticulous around them. HER biggest issue is in the bird garden. Birds are so messy, but even that is more a snake issue than a rodent issue. Snakes are good mousers.

I did feed some today that were lightly ground. The Rainbow and Blood Parrot went nuts. Molly and Swords were aggressive. Surprisingly the Angels were uninterested. Did not feed them to any others.

Will likely use once a week.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Just an FYI re introducing new foods to our fish. Some species will not eat them initially even though the food is fine for them. But I have also found that very few healthy fish will choose staving to death over eating a new food which is good for them. So I have use one of two techniques to change their behavior.

The first is only to feed that food for some time. eventually hunger will overcome fear. The second is to mix the new food with pother foods and then to starve the fish for a few days. then I fed the food which includes the new one. Usually hunger and a feeding frenzy works to get them to eat a few bits of the new food. I continue to do this over the short term but I am also reducing the amount of the other foods and increasing the amount of the new foods. This works most, but not 100% of the time.

I found the second method above to work well moving newborn angels away from freshly hatched brine shrimp by mixing in Cyclop-eeze with the live. Unfortunately, the only lake where those specific cyclops were bred crashed and they could never reestablish the population. Cyclops are still available but not the cyclop-eeze brand. But this technique usually works.

 

[MaloK]

You don't really need a old house for mice... The old cookie boxes where made from tin for more reasons than only aesthetic.

I have a couple of these, they are 100% rodent proof. Even smell is not getting out... I store all my dry food in there.

In peculiar the bird food... You can find them in 10-20-30 gallons size.

 

[sharkweek178]

This might be the only place I can tell this story.
I was having a problem with my fruit fly cultures. I have an air hole in the top that I tape a piece of coffee filter over. I would sometimes find a hole in that piece of filter. Then I figured it out. A rodent was trying to get into them to the culture medium. Since then, I keep them in a plastic bin with some air holes cut into it. Haven't had a problem since.

 

[MaloK]

This might be the only place I can tell this story.
I was having a problem with my fruit fly cultures. I have an air hole in the top that I tape a piece of coffee filter over. I would sometimes find a hole in that piece of filter. Then I figured it out. A rodent was trying to get into them to the culture medium. Since then, I keep them in a plastic bin with some air holes cut into it. Haven't had a problem since.

That wasn't really ,that interesting to them to be honest...

Mice go trough plastics like nothing. I buy oil in large Tin can, they have plastic cork. And I had one piercing trough and spoiled a brand new 100$ can of pure olive oil.

Since then I found copper caps used in water piping that fits tight on the cheap screw on plastic caps

 

[plebian]

You're lucky you don't have rats about. I had a 4" PVC drainage pipe with a cleanout, part of a French drain system we installed to handle flooding. Some years later, I noticed a small hole in the cap that seals the cleanout. It kept getting larger and larger. I couldn't understand what could be causing it and thought it might be a flaw in the PVC and rain water, which is slightly acidic, was causing it to slowly dissolve. I replaced it. About a month or so later another hole started appearing in same place. Something was obviously amiss.

I removed it and after close inspection I realized a rat had been gnawing on it from the inside, its teeth marks leaving long grooves in the PVC. There are two things that I find almost incredulous about this incident. The first is that these PVC caps were nearly an in inch thick. The second is that this particular pipe leads out to a lake, suspended above the water more than 6 feet out from the shoreline. That damn rat had to make its way out to the end of the pipe, turn upside down to enter the pipe opening, then march nearly 30 meters up the pipe to the opposite end where the cleanout was located, just to chew on PVC.

 

[Oldspartan]

This might be the only place I can tell this story.
I was having a problem with my fruit fly cultures. I have an air hole in the top that I tape a piece of coffee filter over. I would sometimes find a hole in that piece of filter. Then I figured it out. A rodent was trying to get into them to the culture medium. Since then, I keep them in a plastic bin with some air holes cut into it. Haven't had a problem since.

Our mice chew through plastic. We do all food storqage in metal and glass, but the most efficient exterminator is the cat. We get a few field mice in the basement every fall but they do not last long.

 

[Naughts]

Be wary with freeze dried foods, they can swell inside fish and cause blockages.

the most efficient exterminator is the cat.

We had a mouse in the house once, the cat had brought it in to play with. No extermination involved .
It ate the packaging on some algae wafers, why I do not know. We caught it humanely in a bucket eventually, after a few failed attempts due to us not realising
just how high they can jump!