best food for apistos ?

[lariviere]

Hi everybody, i want to know what's the best food for apistos.

I use to feed with californian black worms (live) and flakes. What yours prefer?

 

[blueblue]

Live bbs is probably the best one, followed by "can food" such as tetra bits.

 

[Ruki]

Live food- BBS, glassworm, mosquito larvae, micro and grindal worms, when I'm able to catch some daphnia/cyclop I feed them my fishes(but I don;t have many places with plankton)
Frozen food- artemia, glassworm, mosqutio larvae, daphnia, cyclop
I'm not using "can food" because my fishes(mostly) don't eat them. From time to time I use food with Astaxanthine.

 

[Rod]

I've had great results using NLS granules.....expensive but worth every penny

Live food at least once a week and more often if conditioning for breeding

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
Pretty much the same Ruki. The live food mentioned and very occasional Astaxanthin "red crumb" pellets. Also small red worms (Lumbricus rubellus), Ostracods and Fruit Fly (Drosophila) larvae.

Grindal & micro worms, red worms and fruit flies are all very easy to culture, and Daphnia/Ostracods not impossible.

cheers Darrel

 

[bigbird]

Hi,

A mix of all below. Some live food, some frozen and tetra bits as well.
In summer place 3buckets of water outside under cover- voila mossie larvae, get a compost bin and voila live worms....all free and easy....enjoy..cheers jk

 

[Mike Wise]

I notice no one is recommending blackworms among the live food. I think it's because they are too rich for a regular diet and can - especially if not carefully maintained - introduce pathogens. Something that I'd like to see commercially available in the US is frozen (black) mosquito larvae. They're available in Europe, but not in the US that I know about.

 

[animalmgc]

I think it's because they are too rich for a regular diet and can - especially if not carefully maintained - introduce pathogens

ok lets talk about the "carefully maintained"Since I'm only new to Apistos and very new to black worms. Please give me some insight of how I should be using them.Is chopping them up and giving them to 3/8" fry good

 

[Hassles]

Apistogramma Diet

I think it's because they are too rich for a regular diet and can - especially if not carefully maintained - introduce pathogens

ok lets talk about the "carefully maintained"Since I'm only new to Apistos and very new to black worms. Please give me some insight of how I should be using them.Is chopping them up and giving them to 3/8" fry good

Firstly, I consider myself exceedingly fortunate that I have ready access to excellent quality live Blackworms that I feed to all my Apistogramma from time to time (sometimes twice a week). These worms are grown and supplied by the author of the post which is cited below....

http://www.discusforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14917

This pretty-much explains how to keep / maintain your live Blackworms. Obviously I hope many here will benefit from the reading. For What Its Worth, Not only my Apistogramma go 'nutso' over a feed of live Blackworms but my Discus go equally crazy if not moreso.

I raise all my Apisto fry on microworm.

Other foods for my Apistos include mosquito larvae when available, and a variety of dry foods (Hikari micro wafers, micro pellets) (New Life Spectrum 'Grow', 'Small Fish Formula' & Thera +A) (Tetra Tropical Granules) (Nutrafin Complete Micro Granules) (Wardley Shrimp Pellets Formula) and a variety of frozen shrimp among other things. At most feeds the fish recieve 2 or 3 different food types which are cycled eg: they're not fed the same foods each day. I also feed frozen blackworms to those fish that will rise to the surface to take food in which case I also feed Breeders Blend Flake Food.

hope this helps

take care

 

[Gordon C. Snelling]

I have to agreee with Mike regarding live blackworms, As a long term staple I would totally stay away from them. I have a lost a few Apistos which i absolutely attribute to a diet heavy in BWs, I would love to see frozen mosquito larvae available here, where I live I cant grow them for anything.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
Might sound a bit of a left field suggestion but since the LFS where I used to exchange my spare Red Cherry Shrimps has changed hands, I've been feeding them to the Apistogrammas.

My method is to net Electric Eel's "big gnarly chunk of java moss" from the shrimp tank and put it in with the Apistos, abd then when the shrimps have gone, I put it back into the shrimp tank until the next week.

cheers Darrel

 

[Bilbo]

Send me some of your moss :biggrin:


Seriously though DW's list earlier is pretty much what I use also.
Fruitfly maggots are great food and simple enough even for me.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
Bilbo, are Red Cherry Shrimps available in NZ? I know all sorts of things are banned. They are very easy to culture, I started with 10 about 18 months ago, in a 35 litre tank with sand substrate, lots of moss and some leaf litter, sponge filter and weekly 30% water change. I didn't see them very often, and I was a bit disappointed with their rate of increase, as I only ever saw the occasional egg/larvae bearing female (they have advanced breeding without a planktonic phase, producing miniature "shrimplets"), and only ever saw the shrimps in ones and twos. Eventually I had a bit of a clean, and I found there were over a hundred shrimps of assorted sizes. Since then I've set up a second tank and I thin them out every couple of weeks, as the population rapidly gets out of hand otherwise.

I feed them on cucumber, algal wafers and the occasional bit of cat food.
The "shrimplets" are always in the moss and a net full of moss will contain loads of shrimps and the fish love them.

cheers Darrel

 

[Bilbo]

Nothing is allowed here. :frown:
It would be jail time for me if I got hold of cherry or any other freshwater shrimps.


For those who feed fruitfly larvae, has anyone had any fish have constipation problems?

Managed to get thousands of mossie larvae from the kids pool last weekend. Cockatoo's had a great time with them.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
Sorry to hear that Bilbo, I thought that might be the answer.
Does any-one keep your native shrimp? http://www.nzfreshwater.org/shrimp.html.

cheers Darrel

 

[Bilbo]

Looks like we are hyjacking this so sorry to lariviere.

The native shrimp are very cool and should be easy enough to keep but are cold water and have very high O2 requirements. I havent kept them an dont even know if I am allowed to.

Will look into that this week.