Fry Food Suggestions

[CSnyder00]

Hey all,

Just wanted to get everyone's input on what you feed fry while growing out before they can accept normal sized pellets and/or frozen/freeze dried foods.

I currently have my two go-to foods, which are crushed flake food and frozen/live baby brine shrimp. They seem to do well with these two options, but I'm always searching for something better.

Anyone do something different or have other suggestions? I've got about 50 Jack Dempsey fry growing out right now and can test anything you guys come up with. As some of you may know, Jacks are not picky eaters.

Cory

 

[chriscoli]

I love golden pearls. They've got a variety of sizes you can step them up through. I usually keep every other size on hand. These are really rich so don't overfeed, it'll muck the tank up. I also sometimes feed some of the larger sizes to my adult plankton eaters, like Cyprichromis.

New Life Spectrum Grow is also a favorite for juvies. Xtreme makes a similarly sized tiny pellet that is also excellent. I often use small fry pellets from one of our sponsors, Aqua-Pharm.

I'm trying a fry starter starter right now from our new sponsor, Super Cichlids. It's powdered krill. The fry ate it well last night.

I also use decapsulated brine shrimp sometimes too. I usually get this and the golden pearls from our sponsor, Your Fish Stuff.

And as always, live microworms are the most popular among the fry. Easy to culture, never refused. Frank has cultures and how-to sheets. There's also a thread about them on this forum in the live food section. I've tried Walter worms and banana worms and didn't notice any difference compared to the microworms. Vinegar eels are a PITA to harvest IMO so although I have a culture I amour never use it.

 

[mchambers]

I agree with Christine, as usual. I usually use Golden Pearls and microworms. Lately, I've also been using the fry food from Aqua-Pharm.

 

[Frank Cowherd]

Cichlid fry are larger than most other types of fry save for a few like rams and apistos, so the cichlid fry can take larger live foods and dried foods initially than the others. So powdered flake food can even be a great food to start them with. But I like lie foods. The fry eat them readily and stuff themselves with live foods so they tend to grow a bit faster. Microworms are easy. Vinegar eels are even easier and their cultures never dye or smell bad. And harvesting vinegar eels which are really microworms that know how to swim is very easy if you use a sponge. I have instructions for the microworms and vinegar eels even if you do not buy a culture from me.

I particularly like daphnia. I sell daphnia magna. But what I really like about daphnia is that I can put daphnia in a tank with fry and the fry can only eat the baby daphnia. The adult daphnia drop baby daphnia about every three days. Just keep feeding the tank with dried powdered fish food. The adult daphnia will be happy and keep supplying the fish fry with baby daphnia. Besides the adult daphnia help keep the tank free of excess bacteria which is they favorite food.

There are other food cultures that can be kept if you want to have success with very small fry like German blue rams.

Golden pearls are probably the best dried food for fry. But read the label and look for a food that is between 30 and 45% protein. It can be crushed or powdered to make a good fry food, though that does take work. I use a coffee bean grinder when I want to convert flake or pellets to powder or large.

 

[CSnyder00]

I would love to do microworms, but I'm sure that they wouldn't be received well. I've never heard of vinegar eels much until I moved to MD, so I'd love to know more about them. I do own a coffee grinder for just that purpose. It's so much easier than hand crushing stuff. I need to get some golden pearls and maybe some vinegar eels. What about rotifers?

 

[Frank Cowherd]

Rotifers are quite small and would not be useful for big fry. They are great for fry like from neon tetras.

Vinegar eels live in vinegar with a bit of apple juice in it. Cultures last for ever, well maybe not, but I have never had one go bad even without any care for months on end. When you need the VE again, just filter (to remove white mold) the culture through a fine mesh net and add some fresh vinegar and apple juice. Add a sponge of about 1 inch square and maybe a half inch deep. Harvest by lifting out the sponge and let it drip dry a few seconds, then squeeze it vigorously into the fry tank. You cannot see them easily unless you have good eyesight and good light from the side of the container.

 

[CSnyder00]

If you sell cultures, what do you charge and will you be at the next meeting? Will these work for month old JDs or are they too small?

 

[CichlidAddict]

I don't buy special dry food, just crush fakes or grind regular pellets into powder to feed fry. But for first food, I prefer Daphnia I cultivate. With Daphnia, you have no danger of polluting the water by over feeding as with other live or dry food. It's ideal weekend or vacation food for fry as the surplus Daphnia don't die and continue to drop babies. The only negative for me is that I cultivat my Daphnia in ouside pots so I have no supply in winter months,.

 

[Frank Cowherd]

Most cultures I sell for $5 each: daphnia, microworms and vinegar eels, with instructions if you need them.

But yeh, I would say VE are too small for JDs, though I am sure they would eat them, but not fill them up. Daphnia would work. But JDs at a month should take most any dried food you feed. I would just be sure the food is above 30% protein and maybe supplement with live and or golden pearls or some frozen whatever. Of course if you want really fast growth, I think I would try live black worms. They are expensive but fish will stuff themselves and grow accordingly.

 

[Rasta Fish]

I use tetra Cichlid pellets just drop one stick in for the fries they will pick on it all day as it break down

***Here a trick I use go to the supermarket or dollar store buy one of those salt or pepper grinder i get the one with the three size level empty the content out put any pellets or flakes and you are good to go...
Ofcourse if you want to spend $$ on live food that's always good

 

[CSnyder00]

I actually use the grinder method with my new Tangs. I suppose now that they are big enough, I could start doing that with my Hikari Cichlid Gold pellets. They stuff themselves full with brine shrimp when I put it in there, but they are eating three cubes per meal now, and I'm almost down to my last flat of cubes. I put some whole pellets in today to see if they would take them. They did, but reluctantly. They were not nearly as full as they were with the brine shrimp.