What is the best live food for larvae?

[Lusiwarrior]

:uhoh: What is the best live food for larvae, in general, from 1.5 cm to 2.5 cm?

Thanks

 

[Joost]

Daphnia, bloodworms, tubifexworms and so on. It's good to give them a variety of food, and don't stick to one kind.

 

[Daniel]

I usually start with Artemia (freshly hatched) and then switch to the food Joost mentioned (additionally white worms, Cyclops).
There is a lot of life food you can culture yourself.

 

[Joost]

I've heard that Artemia can cause constipation to larvae, because of their shell. Also because they only live for a few hours in fresh water, it will pollute quick, when it's not been eaten. I only feed them to morphed juveniles and adults. Freshly hatched larvae gets Dapnia first.

 

[Daniel]

I never had a problem with Artemia and constipation but of course you will have to seperate the egg-shells from the hatched nauplia. This is rather easy as unhatched eggs/cysts sink to the bottom, shells float at the top and the nauplia are inbetween (you can even attract them with a little light).

You are right that they only live for some hours after you take them out of the salt water. But this time usually is long enough to feed the larvae and after that I clean up the tank anyway.

edit: look at this bottle - there are the shells floating and the nauplia are in the lower part so you can easily siphon them out.

To feed Daphnia to freshly hatched larvae, they have to be small Daphnia and most Daphnia available in shops are too big for newly hatched newts (at least the ones you can get over here). If you culture Daphnia yourself, you can choose the right size.

 

[eljorgo]

I cannot agree, in some term with this.

Larvae from hatching (1cm) till 1,5cm will eat daphnia, baby brine shrimp and micro verm.
From 2,5cm till metamorphosis they can eat blood worms,big daphnia, tubiflex, black mosquito larvae... but not when 1,5cm! a bloodworm usually haves 1,2 to 1,5cm! impossible to a larvae with 1,5cm to catch something like that!!
Cheers,

 

[Lusiwarrior]

Thank you all for your answers! But what I really wanted to know is whether it is possible to replace the small daphnia by another type of food?

 

[Daniel]

Of course eljorgos point is right.

You can replace Daphnia by very small life food, though. I use small white worms, grindle worms and Artemia for that. Also tiny snails might be worth a try. You can even use small mosquito larvae (they are about 3-5 mm when hatching, at least the ones over here) but it will be hard to get any of these in the middle of winter.

 

[eljorgo]

Hello Daniel, Yes i have a great tendency to use mosquito larvae. These here hatch with 1mm and grow almost to 1,2cm before changing to pupae. So the young larvae may be a good chance, but I think for Lusi it isn´t since he lives in a flat in middle of a big, polluted city.
Cheers,