I have never had a problem with the pH crash but my
water is hard and buffered with carbonate hardness. I
am sure with soft water the crash would be very
likely. My tap water is 8.0 average pH.
But I have a much better way of harvesting them if
you only need a few each day(not feeding thousands of
fry). I feed my batches of upto 200 fry each day like
this. I use a 250ml round bottom flask with the long
neck but a long neck beer bottle does work. The items
needed are a long neck container like mentioned above
some fishing line or thread(I will not use thread as
it breaks and makes getting the plug out a nightmare)
and either a properly sized foam plug or filter floss.
Fill the bottle with the culture to the neck that has
been strained through a regular fish net does make
clean up easier when the time comes. Incert the plug
with a string on it to remove it by till it touches
the solution under it with no air bubbles. You want
the plug tight fitting but not so tight that it closes
the openings. Gently fill the neck with clean water.
Wait 24 hours and use a turkey baster eye dropper ect.
to move the water with vinegar eels to the fry tanks.
It sound like you would be adding alot of acid to your
tank but the solution does not mix with the water on
top. Since the surface area is greatly reduced the VEs
go to the top to get O2. You can normally get a couple
harvest if not 3 from the bottle before you need to re
do it.
Back the pH issue with this tech. I tested the pH of
the seasoned tap water used to finish filling the
bottle(this was before I got my flask) and it read
8.1. After 24 when I went to feed the VEs to the fry I
tested it again and got a pH of 7.9 and with that
small amount of drop it does not change the fry tanks
pH when adding it to them directly. I had to prove to
myself I was not adding acid to my fry tanks before I
would use this process.
I have thought about spending the money for a screen
but after getting the straight neck of the flask it
ended what few problems I had with the beer bottle.
Those problems are getting the filter floss the right
tightness to work right. It does not always spread out
and seal the neck and allows the vinegar to mix(with a
clear bottle you can see this easily). Or to tight and
the VEs can not get through it. I did get better-in-it
with practice but once I got the straight neck of the
flask it was easy. Now I need to find me some open
cell foam so I can make some very small sponge filters
and some foam plugs.
Later, John
--- "Henry G. Tomasiewicz" <henryt-in-uwm.edu> wrote:
> Hi,
> We feed our baby fish vinegar eels, a species of
> nematode, that we raise in
> apple cider (50:50 apple cider and water) with
> quartered apples in it. We use
> gallon jars I bought-in-Target. they can be kept
> for months-in-a time without
> subculturing them. We raise a large number of fish
> and generally keep about 20
> jars, but one could use about 5-6 jars worth. to
> harvest we pour the liquid
> through a net and collect the eels onto a 10-20
> micron screen that has been
> mounted into a PVC reducer. We wash the eels fairly
> rigorously and then wash
> them off into a beaker. If you are keeping the
> babies in static conditions,
> you will need to adjust the pH to neutral or the pH
> the babies are being kept.
> This is because the eels were grown in vinegar (aka
> acetic acid). We have found
> from experience that if the pH is not adjusted over
> a few days of feeding the pH
> will drop to 5 or so and kill all of the babies. The
> nice thing about vinegar
> eels is that they are of varied size which means
> different size babies can feed
> on them and they will live in the tank for 2-3 days-
> they do not ruin water
> quality quickly and they are around for a longer
> period of time for the fish to
> eat. We have also added some powder food to them
> before feeding and that has
> increased our survival. Hope this helps.
>
> HenryT
>
> "The idea is to die young as late as possible"
> Ashley Montagu
>
>
>
> Quoting anutej-in-loxinfo.co.th:
>
> > I have some success with red shiner fry using
> powder-like dry food for
> > fry, and cyclops when they are big enough [I have
> no BBS]. Microworms
> > are eaten with gusto but somehow they seem to
> cause deformities so now
> > I would use them only when absolutely necessary.
> Fry of other
> > Cyprinellas I had kept are much easier to rear.
> Generally they are
> > stronger swimmers and grow faster.
> >
> > Tony
> >
> >
> > Peter Unmack wrote:
> > >
> > > On Sat, 15 Apr 2006 anutej-in-loxinfo.co.th wrote:
> > >
> > > > Of all Cyprinellas I had bred red shiners are
> the easiest to spawn
> > > > [almost always ready], but their eggs seem
> smallest and their young
> > > > are the hardest for me to rear. Greenfins and
> others either have
> > > > larger eggs or easier to rear youngs.
> > >
> > > That's a good point. Allan Semeit's article
> suggested fry were small, but
> > > he fed baby brine and crushed flake food and at
> least some of them made it
> > > through ok. What have you tried feeding your
> baby red shiners?
> > >
> > > One food that is popular with rainbowfish people
> in Australia is
> > > vinegar eels. Would seem to me that these would
> be great for smaller baby
> > > minnows too small for baby brine shrimp. But
> does anyone here on this use
> > > them-in-all? I wrote an article in AFM a few
> years ago on them, a similar
> > > version to that can be found here,
> > >
>
http://www.peter.unmack.net/papers/1996.vinegeel.rt.html
> > >
> > > Cheers
> > > Peter
> > >
>
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