Easiest live food culture?

Ok guys, I've been wanting to start a live food culture for a long time now. I really wanted to do a scud culture, but oddly enough I havn't found a population large enough to collect at one time to start one. I give my fish brine shrimp from time to time, but I need more of a staple live food in their diet.

So I've read tons online, but don't have an answer, What is the easiest culture to start and maintain? (Like everybody) I'm looking for a low maintaince, high yield, food source. I would actually like to do some kind of worm, but I think earthworms would be too big. I saw some microworms that said they would be easy, but they look too small. I need help!

Grindal worms. Check this out: http://forum.nanfa.o...ips-and-tricks/
It's gotten to the point where I support all of my fish on the worms I harvest from my cultures and I only clean them once every week or two, and that only takes like five minutes. I would highly recommend sponge culturing grindal worms to other people. I went to my local dollar store and Walmart and got some plastic shoe boxes, Kibbles 'N Bits dog food, and a couple different types of cheap sponges. For me one kind of sponge was much easier to harvest than another. Sponges are good because you can easily see to fill half the container with water to give the worms somewhere wet and somewhere dry, so they neither drown nor dry out.

Edited by EricaWieser, 26 May 2012 - 08:53 PM.

Scuds are hard. Low reproduction rate. I would set up an outside tub, fertilize, establish greenwater and do daphnia magna. They will feed darters up to sunfish. Otherwise I would do white worms or red cherry shrimp. Both work for small to large fish. RCS will take about any common feed and if kept well in a 30 gal with structure, I used hornwort will breed like crazy. White worms are fairly large, not earthworm sized, but much more robust than microworms. Easy to harvest, but keep several cultures going, as they do crash from time to time.

Has anybody kept Scud in a small aquarium? I think a small 2gal tank with snails, scud, and other inverts may be neat. I'd like to see a photo of a setup like that. I think it would be neat on my office desk.

easiest? high yield? i think that depends on what you plan on feeding. for the amount of space they take up, i dont think you can beat grindal worms. plus, they are big enough for most fish to eat. for small fish and large fry, the best thing i have found is a small species of seed shrimp. you grow them similar to you would grow daphnia. they produce stable and very dense colonies, while laying millions of eggs that will hatch out with a simple water change. they eat both suspended matter and detritous, so if some of them go uneaten, they will help clean your tank until your fish find them. very easy to keep, i have raised mine on everything from blended yard clippings to fish flakes. for larger fish, the best thing i have seen is black soldier fly larvae(phoenix worms). they require a little effort to get started, but once they do they are very good at recycling anything you feed them and have a nice balance of protien and fat, plus a lot of calcium.