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Re: Food culturing, vineger eels, black worms, biv Funge

Hey Motoman,

Yours is not a bad diet for killies. Don't let the uneaten brine shrimp
accumulate for any time (unless you like velvet). Pond snails have a
positive use. Likewise killies love blood worms, but if you are at all
inclined to allergic reactions, wash your hands after feeding them.

When you get a chance to visit either a killie club or general club event,
you are pretty far from those places
but check out http://www.fishlinkcentral.com/clubsold/canada.htm . I don't
think a lot of us to the south realize how enormous Ontario is and a lot of
those groups southwest of you are still a hefty drive. (Stateside however
there are killinuts in upper New York, California and on the great plains
who do periodically drive six hours each way just to palaver about killies.)
You also have some great killie people throughout the province.

Look at the AKA affiliate club list on that site. Also check out the
Canadian Killifish Association - the younger CKA ;) - at
http://www.cka.org/news.htm . You will notice that they have a meeting next
weekend within two hours of you. One of those groups or killinuts (and you
may have been contacted off list already) probably can spare a vinegar eel
culture starter.

Remember thought, they are pretty small food. Your fry will soon want to
graduate to something larger. Microworms are even easier first foods - but
useless if the killie fry hang only at the top of the tank.

Mail order sources often applauded on this list, in the US, include
www.lfscultures.com and
 http://www.atchison.com/first.htm . They may or may not ship to Canada.
Also I don't know at what temperature (considering the time of year) vinegar
freezes at. ;)

In the meantime go buy a gallon of red apple vinegar. If you have a health
food store nearby, try a small bottle of that "raw, unfiltered, organic" red
apple cider. It might be even better. (What is non-raw, filtered, unorganic
cider?) Check the archives of killitalk for all sorts of discussions about
vinegar eels and harvesting them.

You might want to peruse phone directories for shops in some of your bigger
cities (i.e. near airports for delivery) to see if they carry blackworms.
Rinsed daily, those worms can keep in most refrigerators - for months even.
Just cover them with water in as flat a container as you can. (I've become
fond of shallow plastic ice cream containers and those square *left-over*
containers because they can be slide unobtrusively down below between
shelves. (Just let other family members know - GM.)

A few worms can be squirted with a turkey baster into a clean, soapless,
foodless, fanatically rinsed jar (the medium mustard, pickle or salsa ones
work fine) left in a tank. Those worms can climb almost anything but glass.
The killies will browse on them, leaving eggs and fry mostly alone. Females
will be less battered because they will have more eggs when the males
proposition them. The worms are rich foods though, keep up the weekly
partial water changes.

In another post you asked about Aphyosemion - or Chromaphyosemion -
bivittatum Funge. It sounds like you are doing most everything correctly.
They are quite comfortable at room temperature. If given space, lots of
food, regular water changes, hiding places and water sprite on the surface
they are among the most prolific at leaving fry to grow in their tank. They
are robust killies, so do give them room to rumble and cover the tank. (I
get some youngsters in a graveled, lightly planted (Java moss)10 gallon
tank. A crowd of youngsters will appear if I take the parents out of said
ten gallon tank and even more show up when the big ones were enscounced in a
well planted old 29 gallon tank.)

Good luck and all the best!

Scott





----- Original Message -----
From: <MotomanBarton at aol_com>
To: <killietalk at aka_org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2002 4:24 PM
Subject: Food culturing vinegar eels, black worms


>
>        I've been mostly feeding my killies frozen brine shrimp and frozen
> blood worms. I'd like to get my hands on some vinegar eels or black worms,
I
> don't even know what black worm are but I've heard people talk about them,
I
> know vinegar eel never seen them but have heard of them. I know how to
keep
> vinegar eels but never have. I manly want them as live food to condition
my
> killies.
>
> Can someone give me some info on them and where to get them? I'd even be
> interested in buying some off yours if I could.
>
>
>                          Bevan, Ontario about 2 hours east of Toronto near
> Peter.
>
>
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