Best Live Food

I know I`ve read a thread on this before but just looking for your advise, what do you think is the best live food?
I`m looking on E-Bay at some Banana Worms anybody use these? or can you recommend something better

Thanks

Chris

Cheers John

As all my tanks are community tanks maybe the worms are my best bet, just want to give the fish a change from flaked and frozen grub.
Will be glad to see any other replies

Thanks again

BTW is insomnia part of fish-keeping? seems to be people on here no matter what hour of the day or night
Do you sleep John

I will never look at a banana the same again lol u could try some grapes

I use micro worms and baby brine shrimp for killifish fry. When the fry get a bit bigger i feed them grindal worms and when fully grown they get a mix of food including white worms and chopped beef hart.

The problem with some live food is the can be hard to culture but the grindal, micro and white worms are easy to keep and will give you lots of the high quality food.

Word of warning tho, keep an eye on your live food cultures when they go sour your hole house will stink!

Stephen.

I have two white worm cultures going. One advantage they have is that they're very easy to keep going once their numbers increase enough

For some fish, the type of live food is more vital than simply giving the fish live food.

Top of the list are Cyclops (or other copepods). These (or similar food having the right nutritional attributes) are vital for successfuly raising some species of fish.
Care needs to be taken with Cyclops in that larger specimens can be predators of small fry.

Tubifex worms are excellent food having very high nutritional value with limited negative nutritional attributes.
However, be aware that tubifex could have been collected from regions containing pathogens or pollutants.
Aerate the culture.

Ditto blackworms (but not always easy to obtain)

Daphnia are great....not as good as copepods....but great.

Various species of shrimp (eg Gammarus and Dwarf White) are great for larger fish that may not take dead/frozen or prepared food. Feed the shrimp with spirulina for added benefit.

Rotifers and other small microscopic food for certain fry are important.

All of the above are useful in that they are quite easy to get a starter culture, and then attempt to breed the food.

Food such as wax worms or whiteworms are high in fat and should only be fed now and then to avoid fatty degeneration of internal organs.

Bloodworm and glassworms are good, but you need to go out and hunt down fresh stock.

Brineshrimp are good food for many fry, but not for all fry as a key food. Not great nutritional value, but they still provide important parts of digestible value.

ian

Thanks to everyone for the info, as usual lots of help on hand

Only a few Euro for the Banana Worms so I think I`ll give it a try and order a couple of starters

Cheers

Chris