Live food for fry - Free and delivered to your door
by Milton Toal
of Australia
Aquarticles
Just a quick note on the easy way I get top tucker (live food) for tiny fry. Been doing
this for half a life-time but never heard of anyone else doing it so I thought I would
share it around.
Get a bucket. I use a 10 litre Pool Chlorine or Plasterers' bucket because they are
more stable. (Actually I use two buckets and two 'Eskys' {insulated containers} during
Summer).
Fill it about 2/3 full of tank water when doing a water change and add a small piece,
say a quarter of a cubic inch, of bad pumpkin or other vegetable matter. (Try the bottom
of the vege compartment in the fridge). Put it down the yard a bit because it will get a
bit smelly and you need that.
As soon as it starts to get high, you will find little brown rafts around the side. (If
you look around sunup time or at night, they are very pale cream). These are mosquito
eggs, and if you gently ease them onto your finger or float them into a plastic cup or
other suitable receptacle you can refloat them in your fry tanks and the fry will have
live food all day. Talk about demand feeding for fry! There are hundreds of eggs in a
large raft and the newly hatched wrigglers are (much) smaller than newly hatched brine
shrimp.
In North America you will be able to harvest about 9 months per year in temperate
climates, from Massachusetts to Marylands and points west, and all year round in Florida,
New Orleans, Louisiana, California etc. In Ontario, Quebec etc. you may get only six
months per year.
If you are game to add some animal matter and make it really foul-smelling, you can
easily collect 30 rafts per bucket per night except on rainy or very windy nights. Easiest
starter is a few pellets of pelletised Chook Poo by whatever name you buy it at the Garden
Supplies Store.
If you are concerned about the smell, you can get a good result with leaf mould or with
several boiled lettuce leaves. It just takes a bit longer and does not attract the heavy
females from as far away.
So now you can reduce the mozzie population and get free food for fry as tiny as two
day old pearl gourami babies. Also this is meaty food so better even than baby daphnia or
brine shrimp and can be introduced earlier for the tiny fry.
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