[anubias]

The title says it all, what's the best first food?
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[rainbowbratt]

There are a lot of good 1st foods. Depends on the breeder, what other fish they breed, their experience level with live foods, all sorts of things.

When I started breeding bows, I had only ever "bred" live bearers--which as we all know, isnt really doing anything at all. Anyway, live bearers dont need any special tiny foods, so I had no experience with tiny edibles.

I decided to go with a powdered food from Azoo. They have a couple different flavors--one being a powdered artemia substitute, and I think the other is rotifers. Anyway, I have had great luck using the powdered Azoo brand foods for 1st food for bow fry. Secondly, I usually step up to frozens from powdered foods....I get frozen foods intended for corals, and other inverts/filter feeders--they usually contain things like oyster eggs, rotifers, plankton, etc. You can use the green foods as well as the meatier foods(you can get green/algae supplements that can also work). I always forget the micron sizes, but with a most bows, anything the size of or bigger than newly hatched baby brine shrimp is too big for the 1st 2-3 weeks, depending on the growth of your fry.

You should get nice, good, fast, growth out of your bow fry so long as you feed them multiple times per day, dont let the water foul from over-feeding, and keep the temp at 80+ for the 1st month or so. As they grow and are able to start eating larger and larger foods, you want to keep upping the size of the food to help keep the larger fry from getting hungry and eating their smaller siblings. You really want to watch out from the beginning, but especially once they hit around 3+ weeks of age, you need to keep a close eye on them to make sure there arent any fry who out pace the others too much in growth. A couple larger fry can make quick work of eating up their younger siblings and really cut down on your success rate for raising bow fry. Cannibals! Its amazing to watch the little fish hunt down and eat the smaller ones--and the larger fry dont have to be all that much bigger than the others to swallow them whole.

So, tiny foods to start--there are others--depending on who you ask--white or micro worms, paramecium, green water, are all things you can culture to feed your bow fry. A step up in size from bbs is cyclopeeze. Bows(actually all fish I've ever seen) love cyclopeeze and you can get it frozen or freeze-dried. You can grind up the freeze-dried stuff for smaller fry too.

Use an eye dropper for liquid foods and if you put the tip of it just under the surface of the water and very slowly press the bulb to release it, it helps to keep the food from dropping hard onto the water surface and then quickly sinking, out of the reach of the fry.

One trick is to cover the tank with something like cardboard or construction paper--put a small hole in the cover, so it puts a little spot light down into the tank. The bow fry are attracted to the light--put the food right there. Then, they dont have to worry about finding the food, it is always in the same place....no wasted energy from the fry swimming all around to get the food.

I train my fish. I always put the food in the same spot and always tap, tap on the glass as I walk up to the tank. As soon as the fish hear the tap, tap, they know its time to eat and start heading to the feeding spot even before I put the food in.

There is so much info on ways and things to feed baby bows, but I hope that helped give you a good start. If you could share with us a little info about your experiences, with breeding other fish, live foods, etc, we might be able to help figure out a 1st food that works best for you?

Good luck!!
~Lori

[Luca]

Lots of good info in Lori's post. Unless your are going to breed alot, there's not much since in getting the too many different specialty foods. The Golden Pearls (size 00) that I sent have always worked well for me. If the vinegar eel starter I sent you took off well you can integrate the vinegar eels a little at a time after 5-7 days as long as they are big enough to start eating the smaller of them, keep up with the GP at the same time, but balane the amonts. I tend not to use micro worms unless I have either a lot cherry shrimp or gudgeon fry in the tank because they sink. Once the fry are larger and start exploring the midwater and actively hunting I do use the micro worms. Then bbs once they are big enough. They can eat bbs for a while, rotate in crushed quality flake and other foods every now and then. Diversity is good. Water quality and temp is key.

[anubias]

I too began my hobby with livebearers and a slate bottomed, metal framed tank. Do you remember those? It was a 5 gallon tank with some gravel a corner box filter, a couple of stems of hornwort and anacharis and hard, limestone, well water. The fish flourished.

I tried other fish when I could convince my parents that it was OK to spend fifty cents to buy a black skirt tetra or some rasbora but they never flourished in our hard water. I lived on a farm and there were no local pet stores and although Louisville, KY was only an hour away my fish always came from the local Kmart.

In college, I finally discovered cichlids and their interesting personalities. I've had lots of cichlids, spawned lots of cichlids, fell in love with discus, raised several spawns. I have a good friend, who was really into killiefish and anything new and unusual. He found G. incisus at he LFS in Lex. KY and bought all of them. 2 weeks later we were raising fry. We fed green water, infusoria, vinegar eels and bbs. He made his money back on the original purchase.

I've also kept native fish, snail darters, dace, and sunfish. Mealworms and redworms kept them satisfied.

I had a tank with 2 trios of apistogrammas that were spawning quite regularly in the mid 90's. The great flood of '97 put 2 feet of water in our house and I lost the fish.

My last big breeding project was working with angelfish and african cichlids. I lost most of them to an ice storm power outage.

Now, I want to try my had at rainbows again. I like their color and size. They also fit my water instead of me making water to fit the fish.

Outside, I have my koi pond and water garden. I usually keep a few buckets of mosquito larvae for summer time feeding of my fish. They love the chase.

That's my background, I haven't worked with any small fry in a long time. That is why I asked the question, I figure it easier to ask what works than to spend a lot of time experimenting.

Thanks for the help.
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Fins to the left, fins to the right.

[mikev]

Interesting story.... I will be asking you about snail darters one day... Did you breed them?

GP's is the simplest first food for most cases... I feed my lacustris (>2 mo old now, some at 1") pretty much as Luca does, except that I use larger size GP's more than flakes.... and I'm too lazy to crash flake for this tank now, they do it themselves in seconds.

[killiguy]

Ive had a parameciun culture going for years and its the most low maintenence live food Ive had and all fry so far(+20 rainbow species plus lots of other small tetras ,anabantoids etc.)do really well on it except I. Werneri.I do use small amounts of liquifry which I think feeds the paramecium(or creates bacteria they eat)more than feeding the fish and use it very carefully as it is prone to foul the tank.I have recently gone to some micro powders(Sera micron etc)with some success.

Although Ive just hatched my first G multisquamata and they are seriously small (even for a Glossolepis),not sure paramecium will do it.

Lori's advice was first rate

[anubias]

Where do you get a paramecium culture?

Snail darters were fun, gotta have cold water and lots of snails and mealworms. I never tried to breed them. They were to easy to collect.

My favorite native fish was a warmouth I caught on a crappie jig one spring. He grew to 9 inches in the tank before I released him in the pond. He (She) was quite entertaining and would take food from my hand. He also had a habit of splashing me if I didn't pay attention to him.
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Fins to the left, fins to the right.

[Luca]

I am keeping a few natives right now, rainbow shiners, southern redbelly dace, eastern blacknose dace, yellowfin shiners and blue-spotted sunfish. I have kept rainbow, greenside, tesselated and johnny darters in the past. I have to say thought my favorite native so far that I have kept has been redfin pickerel. An eating machine. Lots of fun.

you should check out the North American Native Fish Association discussion forum http://forum.nanfa.org

[anubias]

You must have a lot of tanks and time.
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[marine590622]

"Where do you get a paramecium culture? "

Do you belong to a local fish club, or know anyone who keeps planted tanks.

There are links on the web on how to start a paramecium culture from plain old distilled water, this can take 2 to 3 weeks, it is easier if you can get a starter culture. See this

http://www.aka.org/wako/Culturing%20Paramecia.html

If you don't have a local fish club. Then if you know anyone who keeps planted tanks you can collect some of the brown gunk that accumulates in planted tanks. This will have infusoria and paramecium in it that you can then culture. While it is true that this gunk also has microscopic predators that will predate on the paramecium, the paramecium will out compete the predators and both are good foods for the rainbow fry.

[marine590622]

"I train my fish. I always put the food in the same spot and always tap, tap on the glass as I walk up to the tank. As soon as the fish hear the tap, tap, they know its time to eat and start heading to the feeding spot even before I put the food in. "

Lori, Ted Judy told me a story about a killi fish breeder whose fish always did extremely well at the shows. Whenever he would feed he would pick up a clipboard and a pencil and stand in front of his tanks for a minute or two before he fed his fish.

At the shows when the judges showed up with their clipboards his fish thought it was feeding time and would show to their best potential because they were expecting to get fed soon.

[Luca]

[anubias]

when do you typically start adding flake food to the diet?
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Fins to the left, fins to the right.