Live food

[LoGaN]

I need to be able to culture some sort of live food for my cichlids but i have no idea what or how i also dont really want to spend alot of money.

[Rob]

Live foods I'd consider culturing for cichlids would be white worms, earth worms, meal worms, wax moths.

Whiteworms are cultured in damp soil (or something similar like commercial compost) and most people feed them soggy bread, though they can also be feed things like soggy cat biscuits. They need to be kept somewhere cool as high tempterature will kill them. I would think someone in the Hawkesbay club could give you some to start a culture. Just be aware that white worms are high in fat so should be fed sparingly.

Earth worms are said to be an ideal live, containing a good balance of protein, fat etc. You'd want to try and culture the regular red earth worm rather than the tiger worms (supposedly the tiger worms have some sort of nasty taste to them thta fish don't like, tiger worms are the ones that you're most likely to find in a compost heap and are also the ones most commonly sold/used bu worm farmers). Depending on the size of your cichlids you can feed them whole or chop them up.

Mealworms are the larvae of one of the larger flour/bran beetles. They are cultured in a container of bran flakes, getting fed a slice of apple every now and then - they'll get to about 3cm long before they turn into a pupae. Make sure there is adequate ventilation for the container (my first culture was in an icecream container with holes punched in the lid - it went mouldy from the moisture in the apple slice and not enough ventilation. I still use icecream containers but have a mesh held in place by the outside of the lid - the rest of the lid has been cut away).

Waxmoths are a smallish moth but we're more interested in their caterpillars. The caterpillars get to about 2cm long, are quite chubby and their body is soft (unlike mealworms that have quite a hard outer surface). They seem to be easy to culture - once you get the recipe for the culture media sorted out that is. The first media recipe I tried was small dog biscuits soaked in a water/honey mix - I didn't have any luck with this though - media went mouldy and I didn't see any evidence of the waxmoths reproducing. The recipe that I know use is a mix of baby cereal, bran flakes, honey and glycerine - this is working well, no mould and the waxmoths are happily reproducing. I will have to put them in a new, more robust container as there is signs that some have eaten their way through the icecream container - they've also eaten though the material/cloth mesh so will have to see about getting some metal mesh.

You could also try culturing daphnia (water fleas) for the cichlids - depends on the size of the cichlids your keeping.

[Caryl]

My cichlids certainly like a treat of live daphnia and their colour improves following a feed.

[LoGaN]

ok ty

[Ira]

I found daphnia too small for my cichlids, they mostly ignore it. BUt they LOVE mealworms and they're pretty cheap and easy to culture. A 1000 pack from Biosuppliers is about $30 including shipping and that'll be more than enough to get a massive culture set up.

[LoGaN]

what sort of a setup do i need to do all that ?

[Matthew]

get a large container, fill with bran flakes, add starter culture of meal worms.

Simple.

also if you feel like being nice put in a slice of apple or potato. this isn't necessary, the meal worms will still eat and live without it.

Just a note when cultures are starting out it often seems as though everything has died. leave your culture and eventually you should see some larvae hatching, and the cycle begins again.

[LoGaN]

k thanks