Betta Fish Food Alternatives
Betta Fish Food Alternatives
help with breeding betta fish?
okay i have successfully bred betta fish well still in the process of it lol they are about 1 month old. and i only have 4 left lol. (but that was because the biggest one i had ate the rest of them) any way i want to try a different route. This time i used only frozen bbs which isnt live food, but the next time i want to use straight forward live food. i would like a timeline for each stage of their life of what they can eat that is considered live food. For the first week i know u need infusoria but i dont know how to culture it with out being 100% sure that it is betta fry safe so if you could give me another alternative that would be great.
What I do is prepare at least 2 weeks ahead of the breeding time by putting aquarium plants in the tank with exposed roots (no filter). The dying leaves create infusoria or protozoans and they gather around the roots. Put some airstones in too. It gathers some green algae and other ‘stuff’. The fry pick at it for a few days. Add an Apple snail during this pretreatment time. The snails slime creates infusoria. Take the snail out once the fry are in there. A mature, cycled sponge filter will have stuff on the outside the fry will pick at too. If the water parameters are not perfect at the time you need to use the tank a w/c can be done by siphoning out through an airstone set as far away from the plants as possible to not siphon out all the good stuff.
Some recommend putting raw sliced cucumbers in the tank for infusoria. I don’t. It breaks down very quickly and trashes the water. I haven’t tested cucumbers but I have tested blanched spinach I use to supplement my snails diet. Within hours it raises the ammonia to 8.0 in a one gallon jar.
The fry only need infusoria for a couple days. Not a week.
Within just a couple days, 2-3 days, the Betta fry can eat live food. It’s quite possible yours were forced to eat each other from starvation. I didn’t know Betta fry will cannabalize. The most I’ve lost in a batch is 2.
Vinegar eels then microworms then newly hatched baby brine shrimp, decapsulated first, then copepods, then later live grindal worms, then brown worms are all good live food. All found on EBay or Aquabid.
Just start introducing a few of the eels or mw’s on day 2 and if they can’t eat them yet they’ll be easy to clean out. By day 3 the fry will beable to eat either the eels or micros. The mw’s live in water about 24 hours before dying. The baby brineshrimp about 16 hours and the grindals about 3 days before dying in the water, so water pollution isn’t really a problem. I don’t use the vinegar eels myself but some do. An adult mw is only a 16th of an inch so the baby worms are as tiny or even smaller than the eels, although the baby micros can’t be separated from the adults. The baby brine shrimp are the size of a speck on the head of a pin. The adult grindals (Not to be confused with White worms) are about one half inch but are a very narrow small worm. Brown worms (Not Tubiflex, sometimes they are confused as the same thing, they’re not) can be used later. Live copepods can be used too.
Just keep introducing each next step live foods according to the size of the fry and size of food.
All of the cultures, except the brine shrimp, need to be purchased a month in advance because you will need to cultivate the original culture then sub culture before actually using them. Sub culture is just creating more than one culture and stagger the timing of making each culture so if one culture dies or crashes you don’t lose all the cultures.
For culture medium on the micros I have tried instant mash potatoes, cooked cornmeal and cooked oatmeal. My favorite is oatmeal. Best production, but some complain it stinks. I think it smells good but the mash potatoes smells the least. And always remember to sprinkle baking yeast on top of the medium or you’ll end up with mold in a few days. Just make sure you don’t get any of the medium with the worms when you feed. I wait until the worms are crawling up the side of their tub then use my cleaned finger to scape them off the side and feed.
I use cheap potting soil as a culture medium for the grindals. To harvest I use a cut up jar lid remover in kitchen stuff at the dollar store. It has a grid like needlepoint material. Using a spray bottle I wet the grid then dip in some very finely ground fish flake food then lay it on top of the worm culture and wet it a bit more. In about a half day (more or less depending on how hot or cold the house is) you will see tons of worms on the grid. Dip the grid in a small bowl of water to release them then siphon out to feed using something like an eye dropper.
You can get by just using the infusoria, mw’s and bbs before flake food and Hikari First Bites. I prefer all live foods for as long as possible. They grow up to be incredible hardy and disease free.
The grindal worms and brown worms are great for conditioning the pair before breeding along with their regular food.
There are many sites for different ways to culture. Just Google microworm culture and so on to find a way that you like best.
Decapsulating (softening the shells) the brine shrimp eggs is a must for Betta fry. If they eat the hard shells they (can) die.
I modified this tutorial a bit. I use a clear glass like a measuring cup instead of the hatchery to decap.
http://saltlakebrineshrimp.com/decapsulating-brine-shrimp/
Or I have read great independant reviews on this product in that it completely separates the shell from the hatched shrimp with no need to decap or an airpump or lamp/heat. http://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/Hatchery-Dish-p183.html
