Live Foods.

A long long time ago in a land far far away.. oops.. wrong thread.... Well.. I used to have a bunch of tanks.. mostly cichlids..and would stroll around the yard and collect insects and lil worms... the worms I'd just dice up and the insects I'd smash and make a paste.. The fish went nuts over those infrequent treats! Anyone doing this or did things come to light over the last 3 decades that I've been out of the hobby? Bill in Richmond, Va.

No, Im afraid there might be some kind of poison in someones yard that might kill the fish

My yard is 100% organic... no pesticides.. isolated from other yards etc..

When I had hatchetfish I used to catch one or two tiny moths in the very early morning and feed them to the fish, alive. Hatchetfish just love to snatch insects from the surface, and the moths were very soft and delectable!

My 5 inch dempsy would come out of the water to snag a dangled whole worm (3 ") .. swim around for 15 minutes with part of it sticking out! all others got diced worms.. Had them about 6 years maybe? Bill in Richmond, Va.

My black skirt tetras have jumped completely out of the water to catch flys.

No matter how protected the lawn might be there would still be a "small" risk. Wind can carry ferts as well a rain water causing leeching. This would most likely never cause a problem. When I say most likely I mean you would be talking a number so small not to care... haha BUT

If I had to do that I would make a mulch compost. Worms ect LOVE plain old mulch in a nice little pile. If you cover it up it will get very warm as it decomposes and this draws in even more worms ect... This would in effect leave you with a near endless supply of worms and you could be pretty much sure there would never be anything bad in it.

For me baby brine shrimp works very well with the 2L bottle method.

Speaking of tetras.. going to try my hand at breeding some black tet's... making a sponge filter in the a.m.... going to put it in my "only real" tank for a week or so and try to get them to spawn in a 5 gal bucket with the relocated sponge & heater... Picked out a fat momma and a slender male I hope... Am I missing anything.. Not one post in the appropiate topic list about breeding tets.. Bill in Richmond, Va.

STM... vermiposting.. I did that for a few years... even bought the special worms for it.. did it in doubled up 30 gal rubbermaid containers.. hummm.. might have to get back into that.. takes care of most of the table scraps! Plus they double in numbers every 5-6 weeks!
Send me a link to the BBS and 2 liter bottle trick! Bill in Richmond, Va.

dang>>>>> I feel myself getting sucked in deeper every day! I'm searching Norfolk, Danville, Fredricksburg, Charlottesville 1/2 dozen times a day for a deal on some small tanks... breeding and now brine shrimp! Anyone got a good number for a marriage consoler in the Richmond area? bill

A video link for it

It works really well and is cheap. If you have a bucket and so on you could raise them to larger size but my fish the BBS work just fine.

Good to see you have used the compost idea before :) I would only choose that because you control the diet they get from what I have seen there would be enough worms for a long long time.