Meeting Notes

February, 2009

February's meeting was very well attended with standing room only.

JT needs checkers to check breeder program and verify the results. He has checkers in Virginia and needs people in Maryland.

Larry Wilkie has many books and magazines for the Lending Library if anybody is doing research or interested in the library.

Frank Cowherd gave a talk on raising live food for the aquarium. He talked about Infusoria, Baby Brine Shrimp, Grindle worms, and Daphnia.

Infusoria are easy to raise by putting crushed lettuce leaves in water and waiting two weeks. It smells at first, but after 5 days it is milder. Frank's infusoria is pure paramecium. He said to use lots of the infusoria water for fry because they eat a lot of it. Using more infusoria results in greater survival of the fry. Anything that can decay rapidly in five days can be a source for infusoria. Java moss is used by breeders because it has infusoria in it.

Microworms stay alive a long time in water. They need oxygen for best survival. Culture it in cereal such as oatmeal, or use cooked, mashed sweet potato. Spread it out in plastic container and put the culture on top and add some water to let the microworms spread over the culture. Frank uses a zippered pillow case to hold the specimen containers to keep out fruit flies. The sweet potato culture for microworms can last four weeks, and oatmeal culture for microworms last for about three weeks.

Baby Brine Shrimp first hatch is the most nutritious for the fry. It is easy to keep the eggs for a long time. Marine salt has the buffers to keep pH around 8. Use 1 tablespoon per pint of water. Use air to move the eggs around. Rinse the baby brine shrimp and wash off the salt. Add 3 drops of bleach to a liter of water to keep the water clean when starting a new hatch. At 70 degrees the eggs hatch around 36-48 hours. At 85 degrees, it takes about 24 hours to hatch the eggs. At 90 degrees the shrimps die. To decapsulate the eggs, use 1 cup of water, 1 cup of bleach for 3-4 minutes and rinse very well.

Grindle worms are good to condition the fishes. Use dry cat food as a culture. Get quilt batting and make several layers in a plastic container, not letting the batting touch the sides, to discourage the worms movement. Put the cat food in the center or under the batting using "egg crate" (that is a plastic grating for light fixtures). Put the egg crate on bottom with the quilt batting on top and cat food goes in the bottom with the "egg crate". Add water to cover. Put culture on top of quilt batting. Cut a hole in the plastic lid and stuff cotton balls to provide air. Harvest frequently to keep the culture going; don't overcrowd.

Daphnia eat bacteria, yeast, infusoria, and algae. Put a cooked yam in a blender with water plus yeast or fish food and use this concoction as a food. Mix it in water and feed it to the daphnia when the water in the daphnia culture is clear. Daphnia cultures frequently crash, so Frank advises to have two cultures going. They do well in a pH of 8 and do not like chlorine or soap.

Mark Harnet