I always have two of these on hand to feed the newly hatched fry: micro-worms, and baby brine-shrimp (bbs). This is the critical time to get the maximum survival rate.
It depends on what kind of fish you have. Most African cichlids, specially the mouth brooders are easy to feed. They can take very fine grounded flake, or hikari first bite as soon as you can see them swimming around.
With the really small fry like angels, or egg hatched fry, you have to feed them something really tiny, and moving, hence those "live" food.
- Micro-worms: I prepare a micro-worm culture soon I see the parent courtship going on. It takes roughly about a week to get these population exploded.
Micro-worms are very easy to raise and they will last for sometimes as long as you have some starter culture (get them from ebay, it's cheap, about $3.00 shipping included). They are really tiny, and will attract the fry attention at once.
- Brine-shrimp: The set up is very easy as well. Even though they last for a couple of days or more. But the older these brine-shrimps get, the less nutrition they provide. After 4-5 hours, when you can actually see the brine-shrimps moving around, they are too "old" already. The baby-ones are the most nutritious because of the egg-yolk they carry as food. The longer they stay alive, the more of these yolks are being consumed by the shrimps, and the harder their shell become.
It takes roughly 15-16 hours to hatch these baby brine-shrimps under the good set up. I feed the fry during the next 8 hours. The rest will be fed to the "older" fry or thrown away.
That's the reason why I always start the brine-shrimp at 3-5 in the afternoon. They will hatch the next morning, and would be good for the whole day. You have to hatch baby brine-shrimp every day this way for continuation.
This is my way of hatching brine-shrimps. It works exactly with the time I explained above.
- 1 liter of warm tap water
- 1/2 teaspoon of table salt (nothing fancy)
- a pinch of baking soda to keep the PH above 8. This is critical, without it, it will take longer for the shrimp to hatch.
- 30 watts light bulb shines directly onto the solution to keep the water temp at or around 80 degree.
- air pump for aerator.
How to set up the hatchery is simple. You can find 1o different ways on you tubes.
Brine-shrimps are the best food for fry at any age. Half an hour after feeding, you'll see their bellies growing huge with an orange color.
I use micro-worms as back up, and they are not really rich in nutrition, but they are very critical for the first few days when the fry are so small, and can not take the brine-shrimps yet. Or when I miss hatching brine-shrimps for some reasons.
Good luck in doing with this project.
