People on some lists whose fish will feed on non-swimming bs (or which can
be conditioned to consuming them after being started on live baby bs) speak
pretty highly of the decapsulated eggs, because the cysts still have a lot
of nutrient value since they never hatched and the nauplii never started
consuming the food reserves. I'm not sure how many rainbows (killies and
others) which feed high up in the water column and tend to be more inclined
to responding to moving prey would do with them. Perhaps an airstone and a
shallow container would keep the eggs moving enough to elicit a feeding
response. I would still have baby Corys or snails there in abundance.
BS Direct has also started selling a product called golden pearls as a bs
substitute. It is produced (they say) with some air in each granual so that
it will float and attract surface feeders. I have heard several positive
comments about these products and that company from people on the killie,
livebearer and live foods lists. I have no personal experience with them.
As bs (the eggs) has become so expensive (perhaps because of El Nino rains
which have diluted the Great Salt Lake and changed reproduction patterns)
another product that Jeff Magnus of the Apistogramma group and others have
began touting is something called cyclop-eeze. Bill Vannerson has posted his
discussion of them at
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/william_vannerson .
My interest in the BS Direct product, which some time will be followed up
on, is in their products which can be fed to bs and daphnia, packing them
before feeding to rainbows and some of the other rif-raf in the fishroom. I
can see where several of them could also be added to home made foods. The
number of the BS Direct offerings which could offer variety in feeding our
fish is intriguing too.
I intend to buy and check out several of these items this summer (not the
freeze dried blood worms because of alergy potential though). I would be
curious if other RML members have any experience with this company.
Roy I hope this gives you a start. I am sure that there are other venders
selling astaxanthin.
All the best,
Scott