Vinegar eels are quite possibly the easiest live fish food you will ever find. They are as close as you will get to finding something that thrives on neglect.
YOU WILL NEED:
Firstly you need a vinegar eel culture. This is just a small amount of someone else¹s vinegar eels that you use to breed your own. Specialty aquarium shops sometimes stock this, but your best bet is to find a group of people who breed small tropical fish.
The next thing you need is a bottle of apple cider vinegar (it needs to be apple cider vinegar, regular vinegar has too much acid and not enough sugar), and apple, and a few spare 2L bottles, elastic bands, and some scraps of muslin or cotton to keep flying insects out of the mix.
HOW TO:
Pour the apple cider vinegar into your spare bottles so there is enough room to add water. You can use straight apple cider vinegar or make a 1:1 solution (1L vinegar to 1L water) or anywhere in between. You don¹t need to dechlorinate your water, but it doesn¹t hurt.
Once you have made your solution, you can add your culture. I tend to use about 2-3 big tablespoons of culture per new bottle, but you could use more or less, keeping in mind the less culture you add, the more time it will take for you to get a large harvest.
Now, the trick to vinegar eels growing quickly is keeping them fed. Adding slices of apple every 3-6 weeks gives them enough food to reproduce quite quickly. At first the apple will float on the surface, but within a few days it will become waterlogged and sink to the bottom.
After you have added your apple and culture, secure the piece of fabric over the opening with an elastic band. You need to find a cool, dark place for your bottles. I tend to find that laundries are good, as are bathrooms. If you have other people in the house to think about, consider the garage as the cultures tend to make entire sections of the house smell a bit like salad dressing. You can keep the temperature constant in winter by placing your bottles in a plastic crate, half-filling the crate with water and adding a small aquarium heater.
Leave your bottles undisturbed for approximately 4 weeks.
HARVESTING:
This is a much debated topic, and one that often has aquarists so baffled that they move on to other live food sources. Its EASY. Some people have used coffee filters, but generally the culture goes right through, including the worms. There is a method of using a long necked bottle, blocking the neck with filter wool, and adding fresh water on top so that the worms climb towards the oxygen and you can just suck them out in fresh water, but that can be a hard skill to master. The easiest way (discovered by Lilli in 2004) is to use a moulded paper dustmask and just pour the top half of the culture through. Remove the dustmask and add the strained culture back to the main bottle as it will still be teaming with worms. You can then either rise the underside of the dustmask in a bucket of fresh water to remove most of the vinegar, or you can just add the dustmask as is to the fishtank.
The vinegar eels will come out of the dustmask and swim in all levels of the aquarium, and they will generally live for for 2-3 days in the fresh water of the tank. They are perfect for having on hand to feed suprise spawns, and for feeding fish that are too big for green water and too small for baby brine shrimp. They are also good to add to the tank to give the smaller fish something to eat in between meals. Do not be tempted to keep your fry on vinegar eels long term as their nutritional content is not spectacular and fry have a tendancy to grow slowly when fed solely on these worms.
To reculture your vinegar eels, simply get more empty bottles, apple cider vinegar and an apple, and repeat the above.
Still have more questions about Vinegar Eels? Need more information? Swim on over to the forum!
AusAqua.net 2006 | Terms of Use | Contact Us | About
All articles, images, tools © copyrighted by original author unless otherwise stated. 