GUT LOADING

[PhishPhreek]

"Gut-loading" is a technique where you feed your live food source (daphnia, brineshrimp, worms) a substance that you want your fish to receive. (water soluable baby vitamins, yeast, carotene, naturose, lecithin, paprika, spirulina, and color flake foods)  Then your live food becomes color foods for your fish! Remember the old saying, “you are what you eat”. It's true for the entire food chain.

http://www.livefoodcultures.com/Gutloading.html

http://carolinapetsupply.com/gut_loading_insects.html

http://www.aka.org/wako/Gut%20Loading.html

http://www.adcham.com/html/husbandry/gutload.html

http://www.mariculturetechnology.com/FeedSup.htm

Do you gut-load ?
What critters do you use and what substances do you load ?

[eklikewhoa]

Re: GUT LOADING

I feed everything NewLifeSpectrum and that has shown really nice results in various fish/inverts so that's all I use.

[wvgdiscus]

Re: GUT LOADING

I feed mostly blood worms. Very high in protein.

[guppymax]

Re: GUT LOADING

I enrich artemia with fish oil, spirulina, vitamins, duck weed and eggs.

max

[neuendri]

Re: GUT LOADING

I feed my african cichlids Dainichi Ultima sinking pellets and frozen blood worms.  When I first got the tank and the fish (package deal off craigslist), they didn't know what blood worms were... One fish decided to be the 'guinea pig' and now you can't keep them away from them.  I thaw the cube of blood worms in a small amount of tank water, then suck them into a bird-feeding syringe with a length of flexible airline tubing attached, and a length of rigid airline tubing attached to that.  That allows me to get the blood worms down to the bottom of the tank for my bottom feeders.

As for the pellets, I've tried to get them used to floating pellets, but they don't seem as interested in them.  Unfortunately, there is no store that sells Dainichi in College Station, so I've ordered it from River City Aquatics in Austin.  I've been to a couple LFS in Houston, but didn't see any there, either.  Does anyone know where I can get them?  Does Mike have them at his new store?

[PhishPhreek]

Re: GUT LOADING

EGGS ?

DUCKWEED ?  8O

[eklikewhoa]

Re: GUT LOADING

I am sure Mike would carry the select few Dianichi foods that are popular but if not I have seen them at Megans Tropical Emporium.

[eklikewhoa]

Re: GUT LOADING

I feed mostly blood worms. Very high in protein.

I remember reading that most bloodworms were fatty and had little nutritional value.....at least everyone over at cyphos.com thinks that.

[PhishPhreek]

Re: GUT LOADING

We have also found a great way to gut load blackworms. If you put a couple of pieces of dry cat food in with your blackworms they will forget about trying to climb up the sides of their container

[eklikewhoa]

Re: GUT LOADING

Oh, so you guys mean like gut load the live foods before feeding to the fish?

[guppymax]

Re: GUT LOADING

Yes, I guess it is a little trick to put something into your fish that would be hard to feed them otherwise. Fish oils contain natural color enhancers, growth promoter, vitamins and such but It is hard to feed fish fish oil. Boiled eggs cloud the water and kind of mess up the tank but they are very nutritous. Levimisole is an excellant wormer for internal parasites but it is a powder. Another benefit is to repalce the food value that brine shrimp loose hatching and swimming around. Decapsulated eggs have the most food value but live food wiggles and causes a feeding frenzy that results in better growth rate of the fish, especially fry. Well you can put back some of the nutrition lost in hatching and have the best of all worlds.

max

[sproett]

Re: GUT LOADING

I'm not sure if this is the same but I'm breeding livebearers and attempting to breed convicts to use as a nutritious supplement for my two oscars.  I feed them well so they are a fun and healthy snack.  I use a mixture of good flakes, pellets, frozen bloodworms, mosquito larva, brine shrimp and peas.  I want to get into breeding some other sort of food, like worms or something but haven't found anything that is very low maintainance.

[eklikewhoa]

Re: GUT LOADING

The convict's fry don't get big enough fast enough, another problem I found with using convict fry as feeders is the older they got the smarter they were at hiding.