# Betta Fry Food



## Cichlidsrule (Nov 8, 2006)

What's the best stuff to feed newborn betta fry?


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## (RC) (Jan 18, 2005)

Baby brine shrimp, microworms,vinegal eels all work well.


RC


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## leafgirl115 (Mar 26, 2006)

RC Im feeding me fry microworms and frozen BBS but i think the microworms are to big for them. My fry seem to be very small....


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## (RC) (Jan 18, 2005)

If you have microworms they are easier for the fry to eat then BBS. I just start mine out on BBS now ,but I may lose the smallest fry that way.


RC


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## anasfire23 (Jan 19, 2005)

I feed mine all BBS until they are big enough to eat chopped blood worms. It is likely that you will lose the smaller ones that refuse to eat anything that isn't moving but honestly I don't find it a problem. If I start out with 300 fry I sure as hell don't want 300 jars sitting around my home once I have to seperate them all. Feeding them BBS is kind of like natural culling. Only the strongest with the will to survive will survive, the weaker ones will perish and you'll be left with ones that thrive!


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## leafgirl115 (Mar 26, 2006)

ok so microworms are best than  i have about 25 fry i belive. how much should i be feeding?


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## anasfire23 (Jan 19, 2005)

Depends on their age, I fed all mine every 4 hours until they were 6 weeks old...then twice a day since.


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## leafgirl115 (Mar 26, 2006)

but im asking about the quantity of food. I know its diferent depending on how many fry. Im feeding when i get up in the morning. When i get home for lunch, when i get home from school and when i go to bed. but i dont want to over feed...


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## (RC) (Jan 18, 2005)

As long as they are eating all the food your ok. How old are the fry ?



RC


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## leafgirl115 (Mar 26, 2006)

they hatched the 24th. became freeswiming Monday.


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## (RC) (Jan 18, 2005)

They should be big enough for live BBS.


RC


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## Damon (Jan 18, 2005)

RC, how do you hatch your brineshrimp?


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## (RC) (Jan 18, 2005)

I use homemade hatcheries. I use 2 liter soda bottles with air line tubing siliconed into the twistoff top end. I cut the big ( bottom) end off the bottle and hang them big end up. I use marine salt mix ( since I had a 100G salt tank and still have extra bags of mix) I mix the salt water, add the eggs and turn on the air pump. I run two of them so I always have BBS for my fry.


RC


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## leafgirl115 (Mar 26, 2006)

Rc i dont have any stuff for hatching the BBS so its only frozen


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## (RC) (Jan 18, 2005)

if the fry eat it then that is great, but I find young fry like live food.


RC


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## flamingo (Nov 5, 2005)

If you use brine shrimp (newborn) make sure they are as close to newly hatched as possible- after 6 hours, most nutrition is pretty much gone. After 12 hours, they're essentially water and a few protein levels, etc. At a later date- include day old- 4 day old brine enriched with a vitamin supplement also. They don't need to be hatched in saltwater all the time btw, at times though, the hatching rate seems to be a little higher.

*sees brine in his sleep* . I have about 4 hatcheries going atm.


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## (RC) (Jan 18, 2005)

I've never seen BBS hatch is straight fresh water and at really low salt levels the hatch rate was so bad it's not worth doing.


RC


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## anasfire23 (Jan 19, 2005)

I'm considering hatching my own for my next lot of fry (2nd attempt with my new CT pair is under way as we speak) I know the LFS where I get my males from has eggs (I've gotten some from them before) but the first lot of fry I ever had I didn't have enough hatcheries set up at the time so couldn't hatch enough to keep my fry alive. I'm not sure I understand exactly how you use the soda bottles as hatcheries RC. I understand the siliconing of the air tubing into the lid part but why would you then cut the larger bottom half off of the bottles and hang them up? how do you hang them up? I am trying to get a mental picture of this process but it isn't coming to me! 

Anyway, I'm going to see how much they charge for brine shrimp eggs at my LFS this week, save some of my 2L soda bottles and blue tack some air tubing into a hole in the lid with an air stone attached, fill it with sea salted water and add 1/4 tsp eggs per L with the aeration going. I was speaking to the guy at the LFS when I bought my last 2 males and he said he breeds some kind of fish (can't remember what kind, might have been cory's) and he floats jars in the tank with air tubing and when they hatch just dumps the contents directly into the tank. That sounded like a great idea to me but won't the addition of that much salt into my fry tank hurt the fry? I've got a fry net that I was planning to strain the BBS through before adding them to my tank.

How long does it take for the eggs to hatch? From memory it's like 12 hours or something isn't it? I'm also going to set up a hatchery in a very small tank for my son so he can have sea monkeys!! haha and then he can feed the adults to his fish!


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## (RC) (Jan 18, 2005)

I poke 2 holes across from each other near the cutoff end and use string r airline tubing to make a loop and hang them from a hook in the ceiling. I do this so they are out of the way. The LFS's way of doing it is not good. It adds a hung amount of salt and egg shells into the tank. I use a brine shrimp net to strain the BBS. here is a good link for BBS

http://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/res-hatching-c169.html

RC


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## flamingo (Nov 5, 2005)

Usually, I hatch them in fw unless feeding to my dwarf horses (brine would go into shock otherwise and die off in the water when fed). Adding salt helps somewhat with a lot of things, but what I remember most is that it makes them easier to seperate from shells- which, if you just decapped- would help out a lot. Of course, whatever would work in your case is best, personally, for fw fish here, I would always just hatch them in fw with no troubles- I only use salt in most cases when feeding to sw fish or growing them to a larger size.

hth


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## (RC) (Jan 18, 2005)

Maybe you have really hard , high PH water there because when I tried hatching in FW here I got almost zero hatch. I have softer neutral water.


RC


flamingo said:


> Usually, I hatch them in fw unless feeding to my dwarf horses (brine would go into shock otherwise and die off in the water when fed). Adding salt helps somewhat with a lot of things, but what I remember most is that it makes them easier to seperate from shells- which, if you just decapped- would help out a lot. Of course, whatever would work in your case is best, personally, for fw fish here, I would always just hatch them in fw with no troubles- I only use salt in most cases when feeding to sw fish or growing them to a larger size.
> 
> hth


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