Alternative food

[indjo]

I wasn't sure where to post this. Since it was asked in this section and it's also for conditioning, so I'm posting it here.

Basically you can feed/condition your breeding pair with anything (live) soft and small enough for them to easily digest. One example are ant/termite eggs/larva. you can also use maggots (?) .... fly larva

ant eggs (white) and ants


The white in the mouth is the egg/larva



You can also chop shrimps (without the skeleton). Remember to wash/rinse before feeding.
Some people use chopped sausages. But they're too oily for me.

And here are some tubifex. I took these from my tub so they don't contain that much mud/soil or whatever. In nature, there aren't as many per square inch. Without substrates, they easily die. By substrates I mean anything they can cling to - mud, gunk, pebbles, sand, small stones, plants etc.

Tubifex with mud - compared to - Cleaned Tubefix.


Tubifex is not advised for a breeding female. IMO, most kinds of worms have similar nutritional content. They contain too much fat. But they are alternatives if other kinds are scarce - I use them, specially for fry. Perhaps an easier to find is the earth worm. Use the small ones (usually found in mud/wet soil), not the large ones (usually more in the drier area).

So for those who have trouble getting food advised for conditioning, you can try other readily available food. Just remember it has to contain high protein.