Feeding fry: Mikhailov. We feed the fry with egg yolk - breeding stages

Many lovers dream breed fish in aquarium. And sooner or later everyone has a question: how to properly feed fry in the first days of life in a home aquarium?

Feeding fry must be approached with all responsibility, because the big problem is the marketing of fry. It is necessary to decide in advance how many fry you can sell, and it is better to grow a few high-quality and healthy ones than many, but bad ones.

It is not difficult to form a pair for breeding, often the fish choose their own partner. Spawning can be achieved by raising the temperature and making more frequent water changes. Parents usually protect their nest from caviar lovers. But the main feeding worries will start after they hatch and swim. fry... It is necessary to prepare the starter feed in advance in order to obtain healthy fry. The fry that swam for a few more days feeds on the yolk bladder. As soon as he disappears, then you need to start feeding. An improper diet for fry in the first days of life will lead to the fact that the fish will not be able to reach their natural size, and many of them will not be able to reproduce.

Starter feeds must be appropriate for the size of the fry. If, for example, fry can immediately take brine shrimp nauplii from chromis or cancer, then labyrinth fry are too small and they will have an infusoria starting food and only after 5 days it will grow to brine shrimp. The starter feed is also rotifer and vinegar nematode. Then you can move on to brine shrimp, enchitrea or Grindal worm.

Feed the fry it is necessary as often as possible, in sedentary crumbs, something should constantly move in front of the nose. For this reason, it is better to feed it with live food, since dry and egg yolk simply settle to the bottom and those that are not eaten begin to grow overgrown with fungus or mucus, which should not be allowed. The larvae often stick to mucus or become entangled in lumps of sediment at the bottom. From this, the gills and body of the fry are covered with mucus, it cannot breathe and dies.

Because feeding fry produced often (5-7 times a day), it is necessary to carefully remove the remains of feed after each feeding. To do this, a piece of air hose is put on a cocktail straw and all the rest of the food is collected from the bottom. The water must be changed in the first three weeks every day, replacing 1/4 of the water in the jar with an aquarium one. It is necessary to ensure that a bacterial film does not form on the surface. This task is usually handled by a compressor. However, the air pressure should not carry the fry throughout the aquarium.

With a constant availability of food, the correct temperature regime and frequent water changes, juveniles grow quickly. Cannibalism is inherent in most species, therefore, it is often necessary to sort by size. If all the fry rearing activities are performed correctly, you will receive young ornamental fish that fully comply with breed standards, with a rich color and the absence of any health problems.

Also note that virtually any "adult" food rubbed into dust with your fingers is suitable for feeding fry.

At the same time, if you have the opportunity or you are raising fry of elite fish, then it is best to feed them with live food. This is due to the fact that fry of many fish species eat only live prey, mainly because they do not perceive stationary food as food at all, at least in the beginning. However, in some cases, the fry can learn to associate the aquarist's approach with food and will then try whatever is offered to them. Suitable small live feeds for rearing fry are ciliates, Artemia nauplii and microworms.

Ciliates(microorganisms) are essential as the very first food for tiny fry. Old aquariums that are overgrown with algae may contain a sufficient number of naturally occurring microorganisms. But in spawning grounds, where conditions are usually more sterile, there are no ciliates and they have to be bred artificially. To do this, you need to put some plant matter (usually crushed lettuce leaves) in a jar of water and put in a warm, sunlit place, for example, on a windowsill. Water for the culture of ciliates must be dechlorinated, it can be water from an aquarium, otherwise it is life-threatening ciliates. When the water becomes cloudy, it should be added with a pipette in small portions to the aquarium with fry. Read more about this in the article.

Artemia nauplii- a completely suitable first food for many fry or a second food for juvenile fry, which at the first stage are able to feed only on microorganisms. Artemia have a double advantage - they are mobile in open water, well visible and attractive, and their orange coloration usually shines through the transparent belly of the fry that have eaten them, indicating that these fry are getting enough food.

Aquarists usually breed Artemia nauplii from their own eggs, which can be purchased at pet stores. This process takes place in a container of salt water - it can be a large jar, a plastic lemonade bottle, or a specially purchased incubator. The required salt concentration may vary depending on the origin of the population (see package instructions). The culture needs intensive aeration for constant circulation of the larvae. The container must be kept in a warm place at a temperature of 18.5-26.0 ° C. The period for nauplii to hatch from eggs depends on the temperature, but usually it is 36-72 hours.

To collect the nauplii, turn off the aeration and place the light source as close to the container as possible at about half its height. Shrimp will gather closer to the light, while eggs from which nauplii have not yet emerged and discarded shells usually float on the surface of the water or drown and sink to the bottom. Thanks to this, the shrimp can be separated with a pipette or simply drained. Otherwise, some fry may swallow the shell or eggs and die. Water with nauplii should be filtered using a special sieve for live feed or a small net with fine meshes, and then rinse the nauplii in clean water. Never pour the shrimp into the aquarium with the water in which they were bred, as the salt water can kill the fry. After collecting the shrimp, the aeration must be turned on again. A brine shrimp culture will provide food for two to five days, depending on how much is required. A continuous crop sequence is required to ensure sufficient feed.

On a note: Some aquarists suggest feeding fry with a fry from under a frozen cube of adult brine shrimp.

Microworms- suitable food for fry, it can be fed in parallel with or instead of brine shrimp nauplii. It is much more profitable to breed microworms than brine shrimp, since this culture is cheap and easily reproduces, representing an always available supply of feed. The starter culture can be obtained from other aquarists. The only drawback of these worms is that they cannot swim and drown, albeit slowly. True, most of the fry grab them immediately or swim to the bottom after them. Microworms are more suitable for fry of benthic species than brine shrimp nauplii.

Microworms are usually bred in a plastic container (a margarine or mayonnaise box will do). A layer of oatmeal 1 cm thick is poured into a container, then moistened with boiling water to form a thick dough. Do not stir the dough, otherwise it will smear on the sides of the container, and they should be kept clean. When the porridge has cooled, add the starter culture of microworms there. Close the container with a lid so that the culture does not dry out, but at the same time air can penetrate inside, and put it in a warm place (for example, on the lid of an aquarium). After a few days, the worms multiply to such an extent that they begin to crawl along the plastic walls of the container, not stained with porridge, and they can be collected from there with a finger, cotton swab or brush, and then washed off with water into the aquarium.

A microworm culture can remain active for three to six weeks, but after about ten to twelve days, it begins to emit an unpleasant odor. Therefore, it is better to start a new culture before the old culture reaches the stage of bad smell, because oats are cheap and divorce is expensive! This time, you can simply use a tablespoon of the old culture as your starting culture. If a lot of fry came out of the eggs, then it is better to keep two or more cultures of microworms at the same time.

As you conclude this article, remember to feed the fry frequently (some 8-10 times a day), but in small portions. So that there are no food residues in the spawning aquarium and as a consequence of growth.

Fry food video review

If you notice the appearance of fry in the aquarium, look better, perhaps a few more are hiding in the thickets of plants. Not always fry of only viviparous fish appear in the general aquarium.

Malek born in a common aquarium hides in thickets of plants

In the general aquarium, fry of spawning fish may also appear, the eggs of which, after spawning, were lost among the soil and plants and were not noticed and eaten by the fish. It is necessary to remove fry from the community aquarium to ensure their safety and better nutrition. Sometimes for the fry of tender fish species, the lights are not turned off for the first week and at night to provide round-the-clock food.

Small rearing aquarium

Also, in order to improve the appetite of the fry by accelerating the metabolism in the body, the water temperature is maintained at 28 ° degrees. The best starter food for fry is live food. And no even the most expensive artificial food can replace live food.

Live food for fry can be successfully bred at home. The starter food includes the food that the fry eat for the first time in hours of their life: ciliates shoe, rotifer, cyclops, daphnia, brine shrimp, nematode worms.

Starter feed for fry - vinegar nematode

Small fry of spawning fish in the first days are fed with ciliates with a shoe or boiled yolk. For fry of viviparous species: guppies, swordtails, mollies, etc., small daphnia or nematodes are well suited. All of these feeds are easy to cultivate at home.

A separate nursery aquarium must be used for rearing fry. The requirement for such aquariums is cleanliness and a reliable biological balance, which can only be created in a large (at least 100 l) aquarium and in the presence of soil and plants in it.

It is also necessary to run ampularia snails into the aquarium, which will pick up food not eaten by the fry. The water in the nursery aquarium should be periodically refreshed as it becomes cloudy, replacing approximately half of the water volume with water taken from a healthy aquarium. As the fry grow up, they need to start feeding larger live food and gradually accustom them to artificial and dry food.

One of the backup options for feeding the fry of the cockerel in the first days is feeding the fry with egg yolk. The main advantage of this feeding option is its simplicity and readiness within a short time. Unlike the yolk, obtaining a culture of ciliates requires at least 3-4 days of time to obtain a decent density of the culture of ciliates.

Cook a chicken egg for 10 minutes, cool in cold water, clean, remove the yolk.

Pinch off a small piece of yolk and put it in a glass. Add a little water and grind (dissolve) the yolk to the finest dust.

Let the water settle a little, the yolk settles at the bottom, drain the water and collect it again. It is advisable to repeat this procedure 3-4 times. Then we collect the yolk mass into a syringe and add it to the aquarium with fry.

You need to feed it in very small portions and at least 6 times a day. Fry is fed with yolk until the age of 5-7 days, after which the fry are transferred to a larger feed, for example, brine shrimp nauplii.

When feeding cockerel fry with yolk, some rules must be followed.

1) Do not add too much yolk mass to the aquarium, it deteriorates very quickly and spoils the water.

2) When feeding with yolk, the aquarium must be equipped with an airlift filter or a simple spray, this will prevent the yolk from settling to the bottom for a long time. In the water column, fry eat it more readily than from the bottom of the aquarium.

3) You need to put 5-10 snails in the aquarium - melania, they will somehow struggle with the yolk that has settled to the bottom, preventing it from deteriorating. Melania is left in the aquarium and when fed with brine shrimp nauplii or other quickly perishable food.

The yolk is stored in the refrigerator, wrapped in foil or cling film. A new yolk solution is prepared every day. The yolk can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 7 days, and this is quite enough just until the fry are transferred to a larger feed.

Proper feeding of fry is the key to successful fish rearing.

In nature, the appearance of fry occurs at certain periods of time when reservoirs are saturated with organic matter. These substances stimulate the growth of many organisms and serve as food for fish and their offspring. When breeding fish in aquariums, the main condition for their rearing is to constantly provide the fry with sufficient food.

Fry feeding frequency

A few hours after spawning, the fry become sufficiently independent, their first food is various microorganisms living in the water column. However, it is absolutely necessary to take care of the balanced nutrition of the emerging fish, since it is the nutrition in the first weeks that determines what the adults will be like.

Feeding fry differs from feeding adult fish by the constant presence of food in the aquarium. It is important not to feed very much at one time, but to distribute them into small portions throughout the day. In the early days, the fry are fed every 3 hours, gradually increasing the interval between feedings. By four weeks of age, feeds can be brought up to three times a day.

Fry feed

The feeding of the fry should be not only abundant, but also sufficiently varied, containing the required amount of substances of plant and animal origin, vitamins, etc. It is preferable to start feeding the fry with live food from the first days. They can be finely chopped bloodworms, ciliates, rotifers, brine shrimp. Surveys of aquarists show that brine shrimp nauplii are considered the best food for fry, but this food is not suitable for all newborn fish "in size".
To replace live food, it is advisable to use dry food of industrial production, which are sold in pet stores. These feeds are formulated with the necessary nutrients for the growth and development of fish in mind, and the manufacturing process includes UV treatment. MicroMin and SeraMicron feed mixtures can be used from the first days of fry life, and in a later period it is recommended to add TetraOvin to the diet.
Sometimes used as a substitute for live feed, chicken egg yolks, sour milk or milk powder. A piece of yolk from a boiled egg is pounded in a small amount of aquarium water and poured into the aquarium. Fry feed well in the form of yolk, but water quickly becomes polluted from such food, therefore it is better to use this method of feeding in cases where other feed is not available.

Unlike yolk, curdled milk does not spoil the aquatic environment of the aquarium. To prepare food from curdled milk, a small amount of it is poured with boiling water to curdle the milk protein. The resulting clot is caught with a net and washed with water, after which the net is lowered into the aquarium and shaken out until a cloud of small food particles forms in the water.

For fry, milk powder is a nutritious protein feed that is easy to prepare at home. The cooking process involves placing a plate of milk on a boiling pot. After evaporation, a powder is obtained that does not dissolve in water for several hours and is completely eaten by the fry.

In conclusion, it should be noted that it is advisable to alternate food for fry, and food residues must be removed, since this is a favorable environment for the reproduction of microbes and bacteria. It is also very important to regularly change the water in the fry tank. Water, saturated with waste products of fish, hinders metabolism in their organisms and inhibits the development of fry.