Live food

anyone with moina?

I have a microworms. Not terribly local to you though.

There's a seller for daphnia/dero/scuds down in Veronia, I think, advertises in the Facebook "Killifishes USA" group.

The World of Wet Pets has some live brine shrimp

Oh, I have a culture of microworms that I'd gladly let you have a scoop of. They're raised in dehydrated potato flake. A small resealable tub with a hole in the top and a little sponge/mat to harvest from is all you need. My fish have a lot of natural forage/microorganism in the tank so they don't exactly go nuts over them but they're no-brainer easy to keep.

what kind of maintenance is involved with the microworm culture?

Step 1: Open up a tupperware sandwich box
Step 2: Poke a hole in the lid and put some filter floss in it so it doesn't get fruit flies
Step 3: Pour in worms and food. Food is "anything basically". Baby cereal, rolled oats cooked. I'm using dehydrated potato flakes, I just sprinkle them in once a week, mist with a little water.

I've ignored them for as long as two weeks at a time and when I come back there's signs that they thrived and then kinda waned (grown up the walls and then retreated back to the goop - probably too little moisture), if I had a larger culture they'd probably have more stability, but honestly, these things are only the slightest step up from single celled life form, just a shimmer and a squiggle in media.

how often do you have to clean it out?

I haven't had to clean anything out yet, this one has been going for about 3 months now, actually since I'm doing them in disposable plasticware, I may just pitch them when they're dead.

I've had one new culture crap out on me (green mold) but nothing seriously difficult about it. I will tell you right now that microworms are a low-usefulness culture. They're very small (good for fry) but almost nutrient free (bad for growth/color) and, as I said before, none of my fish really go nuts when I put them into the tank. My (wild) sailfin mollies went nuts/attacked the first cloud I put in the tank but ever since then they've pretty much converted to plain old flake supplemented with algae disks and frozen brine shrimp. I'm WAY more interested in doing some moina/daphnia/dero/scud type action (again, if anybody has some locally let me know)

Anyone with grindal worms?