Infusoria can make quick and nutritious fry food!Infusoria can be used to feed egg laying fish fry.
This tiny freshwater equivalent of plankton can be used for all sorts of fish fry. The good thing is you can time it so that by the time they’ve used their egg sac up they can be eating the flourishing tiny little infusoria.
Even an impromptu batch of eggs can be fed with these tiny little organisms.
Fish eggs will most likely get eaten quickly. It’s best to remove them and put them in a tank of their own. If they’ve already hatched you’re still in luck.
Move them into a tank of their own as soon as you can to avoid them from being eaten by the parents or tankmates.
Newly Hatched Fry Live Off of Their Egg Sac Briefly
Generally, it takes a couple of days for the fry to consume and exhaust their yolk sac.
If they still have a yolk by the time you discovered them there is a good chance that infusoria can help grow these tiny fry. If there is no yolk, you may not have time to start a culture before they need food.
Many commercial foods are too large for small egg layer fry.
There are some commercially available fry foods, and boiled egg yolk can work also, but often they are too big. Your best bet is with infusoria. Old school books talked about infusoria quite a bit when discussing rearing fry. Somewhere along the way, it got pushed back into the far reaches of the hobby.
Infusoria Are in Streams and Ponds Naturally
Infusoria are small little organisms that live in freshwaters like ponds, rivers, and streams.
They are also found in aquariums but it’s likely you won’t be able to see them. There’s also probably not a lot of them in there.
Infusoria is a catch-all term for algae, euglena, paramecia, and other protozoans.
Rotifers and non-photosynthetic paramecia are the most nutritious for your new fry. Luckily they’re all easy to grow. Algae and rotifer alike.
Feeding Infusoria to Your Egglayer Fish FryInfusoria may grow in rivers, lakes, streams, and ponds but you don’t want to get yours from there.
All sorts of nasty little critters live in that water as well and you don’t want to introduce parasites and predators into your fry tank.
You can use tap water if you let it sit and age or you can use water from your aquarium when you do a water change.
If you have a planted tank it is more likely to have more microorganisms in it which is beneficial. Some like to squeeze out a sponge filter into the water when starting a new infusoria culture. Other like to vacuum snail feces up as they are high in plant matter.
In addition to aged water or aquarium water, you are going to need some organic matter to feed the culture of infusoria.
SEE VIDEO ON HOW TO CULTURE INFUSORIA BELOW
....
Tips for Culturing at Home
Especially if you plan to breed your fish regularly, it is a good idea to learn how to culture infusoria at home.
By learning how to culture your own infusoria, you can ensure that you will always have a supply of fry food on hand and you will save a great deal of money not having to purchase it multiple times.
The easiest way to culture infusoria is by collecting water and/or filter debris from an established tank. Start by cleaning out a glass or plastic jar to culture your infusoria in. Next, fill the jar with water from an established aquarium – water from planted tanks is best.
After you’ve filled the jar, add some type of vegetable matter such as a few leaves of lettuce, potatoes, rice or debris from an active filter.
After you’ve prepared the culture all you have to do is wait – some hobbyists recommend leaving the jar out in the sunlight to increase infusoria production but you can decide for yourself.
After a few days you should see the water begin to turn cloudy or green. When this happens, it is a sign that the infusoria have reproduced sufficiently to be harvested.
Using Infusoria as Food for Fish
When using infusoria as food for fry you need to keep in mind that infusoria are microscopic so even a small amount of water from the culture jar will contain many infusoria.
For this reason, it is important that you do not add too much water from the jar to your fry tank at one time because the uneaten infusoria will die and could pollute your tank.
The easiest way to harvest infusoria is to use an eye dropper or turkey baster to collect a small amount of water from the top of the culture jar and to squirt it directly into the fry tank. You should plan to feed your fry small amounts of water from the infusoria culture at least twice a day so they will grow quickly.
After a few days, you may notice that your infusoria culture jar begins to develop an unpleasant odor – this is likely due to the decomposition of whatever vegetable matter you used to start the culture.
When collecting infusoria to feed your fish it is important that you do not collect any of the vegetable matter. As the vegetable matter decomposes, this will be more difficult to accomplish so it is a good idea to start a new culture every 3 to 4 days so you always have a fresh one to work with.
Depending on the species of fish you are breeding, most fry are ready to accept slightly larger foods like brine shrimp nauplii(artemia) after a week or so of feeding on infusoria.
Start by offering a mixture of the two – when you see that the bellies of your fry are pink or yellow (the result of feeding on brine shrimp) it is safe to discontinue the use of infusoria.
September 02, 2020
Nigerian Catfish Farmers
