Let's talk live food

[ichthyogeek]

So in the freshwater side of the hobby, there's like a bajillion live foods, aquatic and terrestrial based. However, when it comes to the saltwater side of the hobby, there's literally none in comparison. Sure, there's always the run of the mill brine shrimp, and occasionally copepods, amphipods, and mysis for the fish and copepods, phytoplankton, and rotifers for the corals. However, there has to be more. Orchid dottybacks eat bristleworms. Clownfish eat tiny jellyfish. And wrasses/butterflyfish have to eat something that's not planktonic. When it comes to aquaculture, the staple at minimum is frozen food, with live food being a premium (normally being harvested from the ocean). So what other foods are there in terms of saltwater live food for our fish? You can culture sponges for angels, and algae for most any herbivorous fish. However, what options are there for nonplanktivorous carnivores? I'm particularly interested in worms, since they seem to be high in lipids/protein, but can't seem to find anything in regards to non-polychaete ones though.

 

[biecacka]

There is a guy in here who feed Shia fish live blackworms and they love it he says. Paul B is his name I think. His thread is titled something like 35 year old tank. It's a great read. He could really help you out.

Corey

 

[mikluha]

I've been culturing blackworms using my freshwater tank "waste-water" and feeding them flakes. Worm were happy. Reef tank fish are even happier - they're going nuts eating them.

Unfortunately, I had to treat ich in the freshwater tank by raising temperature and it killed my blackworm culture. I'm going to install small thermocooler (just in case) and restart the culture.

You can get worms from CA (good quality). Really inexpensive. Culturing is easy. Well described online.

 

[Subsea]

Live oysters and clams are available at many quality seafood markets.

 

[Nano sapiens]

A small peercentage of an inshore reef fishes diet are insects blown onto the reef from shore, so an occasional ant, mosquito, fly, small spider or something similar is an option. I feed my Clowns newly hatched earthworms from the compost heap every week or two, so that's a possibility, too (in moderation, of course).

 

[sreefs]

I know all new fish love white worms, the same ones many Discus breeders feed. They are not to hard to culture your self, only need a starter culture.

 

[DeePDiSHeD]

My fish go crazy for live black worms. My lfs carries them.

 

[laga77]

I have been promoting live and fresh foods for both fish and corals for over two years now. I started after reading Paul B`s post. I have both Black Worm and White Worm cultures. I go through 1/2 pound of Black Worms every two weeks. There is a LFS nearby where I replenish my BW keeper. My LPS and NPS corals have great growth. The biggest advantage that comes from feeding live foods is the boost to the fishes immunity. I do QT new fish, but only until they start eating live foods and show no signs of disease, usually 2-3 weeks. In the three years since I switched, I have added 32 fish to my three DT`s. There has been 0 problems with diseases, even after new fish have shone ICH right after coming home, and then fighting it off after a couple of weeks. I will never feed a pellet or flake again.

 

[MondoBongo]

i swear by live white worms, and to a lesser extent live black worms and brine shrimp nauplii.

my only complaints about the black worms is that they die very quickly in saltwater, and aren't as good nutritionally as white worms. however they are usually easier to get locally if you have a good fish store around.

here are some links i found about live food nutrition in the following post:

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=24207748#post24207748

 

[DanDashO]

IME, live blackworms are great for conditioning fish for breeding, but don't really offer much nutrition wise.

 

[sreefs]

If they are good to get fish into breeding health they have a high nutritional value! Fish do not breed if they aren't getting a highly nutritional diet.
I agree white worms are better because they live much longer in salt water.

 

[gus6464]

On a slight side note I fed my freshwater dwarf cichlids and tetras blood worms and they went bananas for it. Would it be safe to try in salt water?

 

[rockslide123]

+1 for white worms, easy to culture stay alive for more than 4 hours in salt water. Not that it matters much since fish gobble them up instantly. I made a feeder that takes about 20 minutes for a 3/8" ball of worms to wiggle out.

Also, fish roe, you can get it at Asian grocery stores

 

[laga77]

+1 for white worms, easy to culture stay alive for more than 4 hours in salt water. Not that it matters much since fish gobble them up instantly. I made a feeder that takes about 20 minutes for a 3/8" ball of worms to wiggle out.

Also, fish roe, you can get it at Asian grocery stores

I have had white worms stay alive in salt water for over 24 hours. Happens all the time in my QT which I over feed. Black worms are higher in protein than white but white is higher in fat. Marine fish get their energy from metabolizing fat, humans get energy from carbs, so it is really hard to say which is more nutritional for fish.

 

[DanDashO]

If they are good to get fish into breeding health they have a high nutritional value! Fish do not breed if they aren't getting a highly nutritional diet.

I guess I didn't really word that properly... They do a lot for the parents nutritionally, and get them into spawning condition, but not much of that nutrition is passed on to the eggs in forms the larvae are able to use.
That was just my experience, anyway.

 

[laga77]

but not much of that nutrition is passed on to the eggs in forms the larvae are able to use.

How did you come to this conclusion?

 

[DanDashO]

How did you come to this conclusion?

This past summer, I wasn't able to devote enough time to be able to raise larvae, so I took that time experimenting with different breed stock foods. I fed the parents only one type of food for a week right before spawning, and then assessed egg health by nest size, color, development time, and hatch rate.
I would collect larvae after hatch and move them to a rearing tank with no food and lighting 24 hours a day to see how long till they starved (basically, put them in the tank and then didn't touch them after that.)

I tried a mix of Hikary pellets, live blackworms, blackworms enriched with spirulina, cyclopeeze, frozen mysis, and frozen mysis enriched with selcon.

Live blackworms resulted in huge (600+) nest sizes (my occys usually are about 200-300). However, they were always extremely pale in color, and hatch rate was always poor; most eggs dies days befor hatching. Those that did hatch usually were poor swimmers and died/starved in just a few hours.

I'll write I thread detailing the whole experiment tonight, I'm at work right now lol

 

[MondoBongo]

Those are some interesting observations. Any thoughts as to why?

 

[lespaul339]

I feed live black worms to my fish everyday. My fish are very fat and healthy. Every fish I have eats them. They go crazy when there's black worms in the water. Plus they are great for getting finicky eaters to start eating.

 

[billsreef]

Those are some interesting observations. Any thoughts as to why?

It's actually very simple. The fatty acids (HUFA's) are quite different in food's of FW origin and Marine origin. As a result, foods of FW origin are not nutritionally adequate for Marine fish. Something that becomes very apparent when you are actually trying to hatch out and rear Marine fish larvae. In other words, ideally you should be feeding Marine fish foods of marine origin, not fresh water