Live Food - Infusoria
Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 11:32 pm
Infusoria is a mix of various one-celled organisms and microscopic critters. This is the smallest of live foods and is often used to feed tiny fry like bettas or gouramis for the first few days until they can handle larger food. Culturing infusoria is pretty easy although there are a lot of variations on the specifics. I have not tried all the variations myself but will include them here to give you some options to try.
What you will need:
1) Water from an aquarium that has been running for a month or more.
2) Glass jars or plastic Jar approx a Gallon.
3) Some food for your culture. You can use a slice of potato, grass clippings, rabbit poo, banana skin or any number of other organic sources of vegetable matter or protein.
First fill a jar with some of your aged aquarium water. Next add some food for your culture. For this example use a piece of slice of potato about as big as the bottom of the jar. Roll it around in your
a little first to kind of break it up. One alternative is to use grass clippings boiling them first in a little water to make a tea. Then adding some of the tea to the jar after it has cooled. Another option after adding the food to the culture is to add an airstone by poking a hole in the lid and running some airline into the jar. This is said to help increase the life of the culture but I have never tried it. Now set the culture aside, some people put it on a windowsill, but I’d avoid cooking it in direct sunlight. After a few days you should see the culture go cloudy. This is a bacteria bloom, it will start to clear up in a few more days as the infusoria begin multiplying and feeding on the bacteria. At this point using a magnifying glass you should be able to see a faint cloud of little swimming critters. Now using a syringe you can suck some up and squirt into your fry tank several times a day. An alternate feeding method is to fill a small bottle with the infusoria and use a piece of airline with a clip or valve to set up a siphon that drips slowly into you fry tank. You’ll want to keep at least 2 cultures going in case one goes bad. If a culture gets nasty and smells really bad then throw it out and start a new one after cleaning the jar.
What you will need:
1) Water from an aquarium that has been running for a month or more.
2) Glass jars or plastic Jar approx a Gallon.
3) Some food for your culture. You can use a slice of potato, grass clippings, rabbit poo, banana skin or any number of other organic sources of vegetable matter or protein.
First fill a jar with some of your aged aquarium water. Next add some food for your culture. For this example use a piece of slice of potato about as big as the bottom of the jar. Roll it around in your
a little first to kind of break it up. One alternative is to use grass clippings boiling them first in a little water to make a tea. Then adding some of the tea to the jar after it has cooled. Another option after adding the food to the culture is to add an airstone by poking a hole in the lid and running some airline into the jar. This is said to help increase the life of the culture but I have never tried it. Now set the culture aside, some people put it on a windowsill, but I’d avoid cooking it in direct sunlight. After a few days you should see the culture go cloudy. This is a bacteria bloom, it will start to clear up in a few more days as the infusoria begin multiplying and feeding on the bacteria. At this point using a magnifying glass you should be able to see a faint cloud of little swimming critters. Now using a syringe you can suck some up and squirt into your fry tank several times a day. An alternate feeding method is to fill a small bottle with the infusoria and use a piece of airline with a clip or valve to set up a siphon that drips slowly into you fry tank. You’ll want to keep at least 2 cultures going in case one goes bad. If a culture gets nasty and smells really bad then throw it out and start a new one after cleaning the jar.