Live food

[idris]

i picked up some live Copepods and Blood Worms from my LFS today. (Never bothered with live food before.)

Having got them home it occurred to me I didn't know if I needed to "clean" them before putting them in the tank.

The bags have about 100-200ml of water in them. I've now read that copepods are fed to marine fish, so I'm now wondering if they are not fresh water Copepods (do those even exist?) and if they could be in salt water.

The tank is 250L so any salt concentration would be low at most, but, bo can I just dump the whole contents of the bags in the tank?

 

[Manisha]

Hi, I usually empty the bag into a container & feed bloodworm using planting tweezers. I notice that sometimes a few of the worms have died & start to decompose so try to avoid adding these ones as the fish don't eat them so they are a pollutant to the tank I haven't fed copepod but for brine shrimp (similar small size I think) I use a small net ☺

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

I've now read that copepods are fed to marine fish, so I'm now wondering if they are not fresh water Copepods (do those even exist?) and if they could be in salt water.

All the ones I've seen for sale have been for Corals etc, but you can get fresh water Copepods, <"Cyclops"> is a famous one.

If you have fine net (or brine shrimp sieve) I'd sieve them out, if you don't I'd just pour the bag in. I think the fish will eat them before they die, I find the fish will eat them in preference to Daphnia, if you feed them together.

I notice that sometimes a few of the worms have died & start to decompose so try to avoid adding these ones as the fish don't eat them so they are a pollutant to the tank

I'm with Manisha on this one, I'm very wary of dead bloodworms. I've never had any problem feeding live p.y.o ones, but there are a few horror stories about frozen and commercially collected bloodworms.

cheers Darrel

 

[MirandaB]

I always drain the bags and then rinse off in some tank water so I can see what's dead and what's alive
Bloodworms do have salt added to the water they are in so definitely inadvisable to dump the whole lot in the tank.