Rainbowfish Mailing List Archive: Re: [RML] Question about Artemia and frys

It would be worthwhile for you to google the rainbowfish websites as most talk about first fry foods. APR, Artificial Protozoan Rotifer, OSI = Ocean Star International. You ought to find that in Norway too. Sera microfood works ok too. All of these microfoods you need to keep in the freezer as the oils in them will go bad. Vinegar eels are good too as suggested. Micro-worms - did the person that suggested this ever actually use them on rainbowfish fry or were they just talking about their other fish??? They are not a good choice for rainbowfish. You have to get the food to where the fish are which is the first 1/2 in of the top of the tank. I haven't had much success with any sort of liquid fry as it creates a nice bloom, like Scott suggested with overfeed on LIVE baby bs. Frozen, again like the microworms is pretty useless. I will say that I've been using a smaller "micro-worm" called Walterworms th! at have showed up on Aquabid as a snack for fish that are more than a few days old. They seem small enough that a lot of them hang in the water column before sinking. Again as Scott reminded, after any hatching you need to add snails to the tank to clean up overfeeding. If you have them available a few daphnia will help polish the water now and later will start producing small babies that will make nice snacks for the fry. This will keep your water quality up. You didn't say what you were feeding the adults but you'll get many more eggs if you think like a killifish dude instead of a cichlid dude. Live foods, not dried and baked :-) Daphnia be good, so is live baby brine, especially enriched (selcon, APR, NatureRose etc) In season, mosquito larva, small so they don't change too quickly are primo. Chopped live black worms is good too. They like the water a bit on the soft side ~ 100 ppm GH and a little tannin will often get them ! going too. You can use some cleaned peatmoss or easier something like Tetras blackwater tonic. These fish don't last around as long as the Melanotaenia so keep working with them and produce some backup fry as soon as you can. If you got a location name on them make sure you hang onto that too. As Mach mentioned there are some "aquarium strains" out there. Some are very tired and others don't look that bad. However, out of all of them I think Tewah creek really rocks! It puts the aquarium strains I've seen to shame.