Re: [Live-foods] Encyclopedia of Live Foods, more fruit flies, daphnia, cockroach culture

[Dan McMonigle <daphnia at sbcglobal_net>]

The Encyclopedia of Live Foods is ordinarily hard to come by or unavailable, but there were over half a dozen copies available just now on amazon.com, three of them for about $60, much less than what I ordinarily see them for.....there or anywhere. 
   
  The daphnia and cockroach culture sections of this book are outdated but most of it is right on. Much better daphnia culture instructions are in an article by Jim Langhammer, retired curator of Belle Isle Aquarium. 
   
  Culturing non-pest roaches that cannot survive inside a house unless you follow them around with a misting bottle are better choices than in E. o. L. F. For great information about culturing feeder roaches,and pet roach species too, try this source.  Bidabug.org  http://www.bidabug.org/Forum/index.php? Signing up may get you a connection to some neat live foods, not all of them roaches.Some  co-culture orange isopods, dwarf white isopods,  and black morph "gray" crickets with some of them.
   
  Another use for fruit flies is to feed them as maggots. They are really more useful to more fish in this form since not all fish like to feed at the surface, and some have difficulty biting a piece off a fly but the maggots are soft enough that very small fry can eat them. Make the culture with only soluble ingredients, such as instant potato flakes. When a culture has lot of maggots, dump the adults into a new culture and put the maggot culture into a container of water large enough to dissolve the medium. Use a fish net to collect the maggots, and hand pick out any lumps of instant potato that have dried out too much to dissolve easily. The only drawback is it gets you a little more intimately involved in the life cycle of a fly than when feeding the adults. Since they are so prolific and use up nearly all the medium, winged fruit flies are a good choice for this.
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