Most experienced aquarium fish keepers will agree that live foods are the best thing you can feed your fish. This premium food is the closest thing to what fish eat in nature and has numerous benefits. The fish will eat if the food moves, which is especially helpful if they are underweight or growing and need to eat more nutrients than usual. Also, hunting is good for your aquarium animals’ bodies and minds, and you can see interesting behaviors that don’t happen when they’re fed flakes. Finally, live foods are one of the fastest ways to condition your fish for breeding. Learn about these 10 popular live foods and how to culture some of them in your own home.
Live foods are some of the best things you can feed your aquarium fish. They provide nutrition and enrichment that dry foods simply can’t match. Live foods like brine shrimp, daphnia, and blackworms encourage natural feeding behaviors and help condition fish for spawning. Plus, they contain nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and other compounds that are more bioavailable than those found in processed fish foods.
However, purchasing live foods regularly can get expensive. That’s why many aquarists choose to culture their own. Raising your own live fish food gives you a sustainable, readily available supply for a fraction of the cost of buying it. With a bit of time and effort, you’ll have nutritious live foods available any time you need them.
In this comprehensive guide. we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about culturing the most popular live foods for aquarium fish
Why Culture Your Own Live Fish Food?
Here are some of the biggest benefits of raising your own live fish foods at home:
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Huge cost savings – Once your cultures are established the ongoing cost of materials and maintenance is minimal. This saves you from continually buying expensive live foods from the store.
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Reliable supply – With store-bought live foods, you never know if they’ll be in stock when you need them. Growing your own gives you food available anytime.
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Better nutrition – You control exactly how you culture and enrich the live foods. This allows you to maximize nutrition before feeding them to your fish.
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No contaminants – Live foods from stores may contain parasites, pathogens, or other contaminants. Culturing your own lets you prevent exposure to these.
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Fun and educational – Raising live aquarium foods is an enjoyable, rewarding aspect of the hobby. It also gives you a better understanding of the aquarium ecosystem.
10 Best Live Foods to Culture for Aquarium Fish
Here are 10 of the top live foods that you can easily culture at home:
1. Microworms
Microworms are tiny nematode worms that measure about 1 mm long when fully grown. Their microscopic size makes them perfect food for feeding small fry.
Microworm cultures are very easy to start and maintain. Just mix some instant mashed potatoes and yeast together in a plastic container to get your culture going. Add more potato and yeast every few weeks to keep it producing. The worms multiply rapidly, providing a steady supply of nutritious live food.
2. Vinegar Eels
Vinegar eels are another type of microscopic worm that makes excellent fry food. To culture them, just add apple cider vinegar and slices of apple to a container.
After a few weeks, the eels will multiple to the point where the vinegar turns cloudy with them. When it’s time to harvest, drain off the vinegar and the eels will be ready to feed to your fish.
3. Grindal Worms
Slightly larger than microworms, Grindal worms are another nematode well-suited for feeding small fish and fry. They culture similar to microworms but prefer cooler temperatures around 70°F.
Use some moist peat moss or coconut fiber as substrate and add yeast, cereal, or fish food as their nutrition source. Grindal worms are easy to harvest by collecting them from the sides and lid of the container.
4. White Worms
White worms fill the niche between Grindal worms and larger live foods. At around 1 cm in length, they work well for small to medium-sized fish. The culture process is similar to Grindal worms but white worms require cooler temperatures around 55°F.
5. Daphnia
Daphnia, commonly called water fleas, are small planktonic crustaceans between 0.2 – 5 mm long. Their size makes them perfect food for a wide range of fish including small fry and adults.
They thrive in cooler water around 68°F. Add some water from an established tank to get your culture started and feed yeast, algae, or fish food. Daphnia reproduce prolifically, giving you a hearty supply to harvest as needed.
6. Brine Shrimp
Newly hatched brine shrimp are a staple food for raising fish fry. Brine shrimp eggs are inexpensive and can be easily hatched at home to provide a constant supply.
Use saltwater aquarium salt or sea salt to hatch the eggs. After 18-36 hours, shrimp ready to feed will have hatched out. Rinse the baby brine shrimp in fresh water before feeding to help separate them from the empty egg shells.
7. Blackworms
Blackworms are a larger live food growing up to 4 inches long. Many breeders use them to condition fish for spawning. They prefer cooler temperatures below 55°F.
Once you acquire a starter culture, keep them in the refrigerator in shallow, oxygenated water. Change the water daily. Their larger size makes blackworms suitable for medium to large fish.
8. Bloodworms
Similar in size and care to blackworms, bloodworms are the aquatic larvae of non-biting midges. Both make good foods for conditioning fish but bloodworms typically cost a bit more than blackworms.
9. Mysis Shrimp
Mysis shrimp are a brackish water species commonly used to feed saltwater fish. But they also work well for larger freshwater fish at 1⁄2 to 3⁄4 inches long.
Use saltwater aquarium salt to culture mysis shrimp. They require additional protein foods like fish flakes or pellets along with green water or yeast to thrive. An established mysis colony can produce quite a bountiful supply for regular harvests.
10. Snails
For fish that rasp food from hard surfaces, keeping a breeding colony of snails is an excellent live food option. Many loaches, puffers, and large cichlids enjoy tasty escargot.
Ramshorn and Malaysian trumpet snails are especially easy to culture. Just give them calcium-rich foods like blanched vegetables along with algae wafers and calcium supplements. They’ll thrive, providing constant snacks and enrichment for any determined snail-eating fish.
Step-by-Step Guides for Culturing 5 Top Live Foods
Let’s go over the complete step-by-step processes for culturing five of the most popular live fish foods. These will give you detailed guidance to grow each type successfully at home.
Culturing Microworms
Microworms are the perfect starter live food for fishkeepers new to culturing. Here’s an easy process for culturing microworms:
Supplies Needed:
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Plastic container
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Instant mashed potatoes
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Active dry yeast
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Microworm starter culture (or just a bit of aquarium mulm)
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Spoon or scoop
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Glass jar
Steps:
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Mix a few tablespoons of instant mashed potatoes and a teaspoon of yeast with enough water to make a smooth slurry.
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Pour the slurry into your plastic container to a depth of 1⁄2 to 1 inch.
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Add a pinch of microworms from your starter culture or a small bit of mulm if starting from scratch.
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Cover the container but leave air holes or gaps for ventilation.
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Place the container somewhere away from light with room temperatures around 70-80°F.
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Wait approximately 2-3 weeks for the culture to establish. Check for microworms crawling on the sides and lid.
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To harvest, use a spoon or scoop to collect worms from the sides, rinse in a glass jar of water, and feed them out with an eyedropper or pipette.
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Add more potato and yeast slurry every 1-2 weeks to keep the culture fed.
That’s all it takes to get a thriving microworm culture up and running!
Culturing Vinegar Eels
Vinegar eels are another easy live food that requires minimal maintenance. Follow these steps:
Supplies Needed:
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Glass jar or bottle
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Apple cider vinegar
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Apple slices
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Vinegar eel starter culture
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Eyedropper or pipette
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Small fish net
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Container for harvesting
Steps:
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Fill your glass container about halfway with apple cider vinegar.
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Add a few thin apple slices and a pinch of vinegar eels to get it started.
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Cover the container with a paper towel or coffee filter secured with a rubber band to allow air exchange while keeping out fruit flies.
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Place the container somewhere out of direct light around 70-80°F.
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Check the culture daily and add more apple slices as needed if the vinegar appears to be clearing up.
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After 2-3 weeks, the vinegar should be cloudy with swimming eels.
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To harvest, dilute the culture with some declorinated water. Swirl the container to concentrate the eels.
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Use a
Baby Brine Shrimp
Peacock gudgeon fry eating baby brine shrimp
You can’t go wrong with baby brine shrimp when you want to raise fish babies or get adult fish to spawn. These tiny Artemia crustaceans live in salt water. When they are born, their yolk sacs are full of proteins and healthy fats that make them very healthy. Just put brine shrimp eggs in salt water to hatch them at home. If you heat the water to 74–82°F (23–28°C), it should take about 18–36 hours. When you see a lot of tiny pink dots swimming around, shine a light on the bottom of your brine shrimp hatchery to get the brine shrimp to come out of their eggs. Follow our exact recipe for hatching brine shrimp by reading the full article.
Many fish — like puffers, loaches, and larger South American cichlids — enjoy eating live snails. For pufferfish, the snail shells help to grind down their ever-growing teeth so they won’t get too long. Set up a separate aquarium or tub as a breeding factory for bladder, ramshorn, or Malaysian trumpet snails to get a steady supply of these water snails. They need hard water with higher pH and GH, or else they may develop holes in their shells. If you have soft water like we do, we like to use a substrate of 1 to 2 inches (3 to 5 cm) of crushed coral. If needed, we dose mineral supplements like Wonder Shell or Seachem Equilibrium. Then we feed Pleco Banquet Blocks, Nano Banquet Food Blocks, and other fish foods high in calcium. For more information, learn about the top 7 freshwater snails.
Fish that lay eggs, like tetras, rainbowfish, and killifish, usually make very small fry that are too small to eat regular fry food. White roundworms called vinegar eels are harmless and easy to grow. They are great for babies until they are big enough to eat baby brine shrimp. Fill a wine bottle or other long-necked bottle with 20% apple cider vinegar, 20% dechlorinated water, and a few apple slices. Once there are enough vinegar eels, you can catch them by putting filter floss and dechlorinated water in the bottle’s neck. The vinegar eels will then swim out of the vinegar and into the fresh water. Then use a pipette to remove some of the vinegar eels and feed them to your fish fry. Read our step-by-step instructions to make your own vinegar eel cultures.
Kribensis fry eating microworms
Banana worms, walter worms, and micro worms are also nematodes or roundworms used as live fish food. They are a bit bigger than vinegar eels but not as big as baby brine shrimp, so you can feed them to little fry. We like to start our cultures in small plastic containers with instant mashed potatoes. Create a ventilation hole in the lid of the plastic container and fill it with filter floss to keep bugs out. You can get them by running your finger along the sides of the plastic tub, where the microworms have climbed up. Then, to feed the fish, dip your finger right into the tank. Check out this easy tutorial for more details.
These aquatic crustaceans are roughly 1–5 millimeters long and therefore make excellent food for small to medium fish. As they breed quickly, it’s best to keep them in as much water as possible to keep the water conditions stable and keep the population from dropping. Use old tank water or aged, dechlorinated water for water changes since they are very sensitive to chlorine. Also, long exposure to light and cooler temperatures around 68°F (20°C) are preferred for optimal reproduction. To keep the water clear of food, feed daphnia active dry yeast, green water, or spirulina powder whenever the water isn’t cloudy with food. They are easily harvested by slowly scooping a fine-meshed aquarium net through the water. Learn more in our article about culturing daphnia.
What do most newborn fish eat in the wild? Usually microorganisms such as microalgae, protozoans, and invertebrate larvae. Therefore, many fish breeders make their own cultures of freshwater plankton (i. e. , infusoria) to feed tiny fry. Fill a large jar with a few quarts (or liters) of old tank water and squeeze some mulm from your filter media into it. This is one of the most common ways to do it. To feed the infusoria, drop a 3-inch (7.5 cm) piece of banana peel or ½ teaspoon of instant yeast. To see the results faster, heat the water to 78–80°F (26–27°C). In a couple of days, you should see some small, moving dots. If the water goes from cloudy to clear, that means the infusoria have eaten all the food you gave them and the culture is ready to be harvested. Suck out some of the water with a pipette and feed them directly to your baby fry.
Fish that live near the bottom love live blackworms because they sink to the bottom. Many breeders think they are the best way to train corydoras catfish. Because they are hard to grow from eggs at home, farms in the US use man-made ponds to grow large populations of California blackworms. You can usually purchase blackworms either from your local fish store or online directly from the farms. When you get the blackworms, put them in a fine-mesh fish net and wash them well with dechlorinated water that has been chilled to 40–55°F (4–13°C). Keep the worms in a wide, shallow container so that they don’t get too crowded. This way, the worms won’t be stacked more than 0 5 inches high (1. 3 cm). Fill the container with just enough cold, dechlorinated water to cover the blackworms. Then, put the container in the fridge without the lid. Rinse the worms every day with pre-chilled, dechlorinated water. If you don’t, they will quickly make the water smell bad, so do this every day until you feed them to your fish.
Grindal and White Worms
After the fish fry have grown past vinegar eels and micro worms, you can give them Grindal worms (about 0 5 mm in diameter) and then eventually white worms (about 1 mm in diameter). Start by sterilizing the substrate (e. g. , organic potting soil, peat moss, or coconut fiber) from mites and other pests. You can heat the dirt in an oven at 180–200°F (82–93°C) for 30 minutes, or you can wet the substrate and microwave it for 90 seconds at a time until it reaches 180–200°F (82–93°C).
Cover the substrate with plastic wrap and set it aside until it cools down. If it needs more water, add a little dechlorinated water. Afterwards, add the starter worm culture and some food (e. g. , bread and yogurt, oatmeal, instant mashed potatoes, or even fish food) to the surface of the substrate. Place a deli cup lid on top of the food. Then, cut a hole in the lid of the plastic container for air flow and stick a piece of fabric over it to keep bugs out. Finally, place the lid on the plastic container.
White worms need to be kept at 55°F (13°C) in a cool basement or wine chiller. Grindal worms can live in room temperatures of 70–75°F (21–24°C). Take the deli cup lid off of top of the food to get them. Then, wipe off some worms with your finger and dip them in a small cup of water to clean them before giving them to your fish.
Many fish eat insects and insect larvae as part of their natural diet, and the exoskeletons of these insects are good roughage that helps fish digest food better. Feeder bugs like mealworms, crickets, and dubia roaches can be bought at stores that sell reptiles. Some people even raise their own colonies of dubia roaches. You can get red wigglers and earthworms at some pet stores and bait shops, or you can raise them yourself.
Put out a 5-gallon bucket of dechlorinated water and wait for mosquitoes to lay their eggs. This way, you can collect bugs from the wild without bringing in any possible parasites. Choose a fine-mesh net to catch mosquito larvae on the surface of the water. Do this every day or the larvae will grow up to be adult mosquitos.
We don’t sell feeder fish at Aquarium Co-Op because they are more likely to bring disease into your aquarium, and most people don’t bother keeping feeder fish in quarantine. Also, goldfish and minnows have a lot of thiaminase, which can stop your predator fish from getting enough thiamin (or vitamin B1) and lead to a lot of health problems if they eat a lot of them. It’s important to give your pet a variety of foods and not just one kind of food all the time to avoid nutrient deficiencies.
That being said, some hobbyists raise their own feeder fish at home to minimize the risk of infection. For instance, livebearers (fish that have live young) reproduce very quickly. Getting rid of some of the babies will help the colony stay small. When breeding cherry shrimp, it might be necessary to get rid of the ones that aren’t as colorful so that the line gets better over time. Not everyone likes to eat live fish or bugs, but it’s a normal part of a predator’s life.
You can buy most live cultures online or from hobbyists in your area. Now that you know what foods are best for your fish, give them a try. Also, you should always make extra cultures as a backup in case the first one crashed and can’t be used anymore. Happy cooking with live food! Don’t forget to check out the video on how to make baby brine shrimp, which is our favorite live food.
5 Easy Live Foods to Feed your Fish – Live Food Cultures You Can Keep at Home
How do you make a healthy fish culture?
Top it off with a bit of active yeast, and mix it all up with some water until it is very moist. Stir in a little extra-virgin olive oil to increase the culture yield/growth, as well as to benefit the fish it’s fed to through a higher amino acid content and improved vitamin profile.
What are the benefits of a live food culture?
Another benefit of live food cultures is you can raise tiny organisms to feed small fish fry in your aquarium. Following is an introduction to culturing the most common live fish foods. Further research into methods is always recommended as they do vary. Containers: Recycled, disposable or Dollar Store containers will all work for worm cultures.
Why do fish breeders use live cultures?
Breeders use live cultures to bring their fish into breeding condition. Live fish food is often used in raising baby fish (fry) because the high protein levels increase the growth rate, but it’s important to support that accelerated growth rate with other nutrients required for optimum growth and healthy development.
Why do fish eat live foods?
Plus, hunting provides both physical and mental enrichment for your aquarium animals and allows you to see interesting behaviors that might not appear when feeding flakes. Finally, live foods are one of the fastest ways to condition your fish for breeding. Learn about these 10 popular live foods and how to culture some of them in your own home. 1.