Fry Food?

What do ya'll feed your sunfish fry? I know a lot of egglaying fishes are extremely small when they're born. Is this the case with sunfish? Do they need greenwater as a first food, or can they eat small insect larvae, such as mosquitoes?

I had Northern Longear Sunfish and Bluespotted Sunfish spawn in my 300 gallon pond this summer. The fry found enough food and grew well (if I can keep the dragonfly nymphs from eating too many fry!) I did bring some Longear eggs inside. Yes, the fry are tiny. It took 6 days for the Longears to become free swimming.

Answer: You could try floating mosquito egg rafts on the tank. I used egg yolk suspension, vinegar eels, paramecium, and Cyclopeese dusted on the water surface. It too almost 3 weeks for any of either species to be big enough to eat live baby brine shrimp nauplii.

I had Northern Longear Sunfish and Bluespotted Sunfish spawn in my 300 gallon pond this summer. The fry found enough food and grew well (if I can keep the dragonfly nymphs from eating too many fry!) I did bring some Longear eggs inside. Yes, the fry are tiny. It took 6 days for the Longears to become free swimming.

Answer: You could try floating mosquito egg rafts on the tank. I used egg yolk suspension, vinegar eels, paramecium, and Cyclopeese dusted on the water surface. It too almost 3 weeks for any of either species to be big enough to eat live baby brine shrimp nauplii.

Great first post - you sound like an old-timer! I hardly ever hear about egg-yolk suspension or vinegar eels any more.

What do ya'll feed your sunfish fry? I know a lot of egglaying fishes are extremely small when they're born. Is this the case with sunfish? Do they need greenwater as a first food, or can they eat small insect larvae, such as mosquitoes?

Crappie are the smallest sunfish as larvae, alsmost as small as baby bettas and paradise gouramies if you have experience with those. THe Enneacanthus sunfishes are next smallest and the Lepomis over lap the Enneacanthus in size and some also much bigger while the rockbasses and regular basses have really big first feeding kids, the latter with fry like some mouth brooding cichlids.

If you plan to rear larvae in a small pond and want more food available that is actually grown in the pond then add some alfalfa pellets such as those used for rabbit food. It will enhance the food chain for the little zooplankton the larvae will then prey on. This method when it works correctly will reduce visibility of pond water ideally to no more than a foot.

If rearing them indoors I like to think more options available.

1. You can raise food outdoors and bring it in. Use alfalfa pellets to feed a population of plankton in a fishless pond or tank in sunlight with gentle aeration.

2. My preffered method is hatching brine shrimp. Cost a little more and takes more effort to rear eats but you have more control and less likely to introduce predators or disease organisms. Some say brine shrimp too large for some sunfish fry / larvae but not so if fed when brine shrimp freshly hatched.

Newly hatched brine shrimp nauplii are too big.

I have had Bluespotted Sunfish and Northern Longear fry this summer. I have raised rainbowfish, genetically altered Zebra Danios, 6 species of Native minnows, and scores of batches of Betta splendens.

You know, I've been keeping and raising fish for about 45 years and I seen very few fry that cannot eat either microworms or newly hatched brine shrimp. Brine shrimp if fed the day of hatching will raise lots of Blue spotted Sunfish. Feeding BBS green water and vitamens to BBS for a day will really get fry growing after the fry are about a week old. Yes there are are few (like Discus, Bettas and a few others) that need one celled food, but the Lepomis specises should all raise on the two.....Jim

Amazing how different a species can be. I have raised over 110 batches of Betta splendens, most with no other fry food than baby brine shrimp.

to centrarchid
I like alfalfa pellets too.

Amazing how different a species can be. I have raised over 110 batches of Betta splendens, most with no other fry food than baby brine shrimp.

to centrarchid
I like alfalfa pellets too.

Rotifers will work like the single celled critters for bettas, crappie and a few other itty bitty fish larvae. Despite being nearly 1/3 size of baby brine shrimp they are sort of like gummy bears and smaller larvae can get them down well enough to grow. Suprisingly easy to culture as well.

Well, I tried them and they are very nasty.

Some of the other foods you can try that I have had good results with are A.P.R. (Artificial Plankton & Rotifer) and Golden Pearls. Golden Pearls comes in differents sizes ranging from 50 micron to 800 micron. I still like using the old reliable egg infusion tho.

Bill F.

I can tell you from experience when I used to raise tropical fish, that crushing up shrimp pellets and throwing them in worked. It was almost like a powder. I saw the fry eat it and they thrived from it. Not too sure how well it would go with natives though.

Adam

I can tell you from experience when I used to raise tropical fish, that crushing up shrimp pellets and throwing them in worked. It was almost like a powder. I saw the fry eat it and they thrived from it. Not too sure how well it would go with natives though.

Adam

I am looking at several commerciallyu available fry feeds for bluegill, redear and likely their hybrid. It is evident many feeds on the market are properly formulated to be complete for the needs of at least some species. The biggest failings the feeds may have is in their shelf life and how they are applied. Feed needs to be fresh (recently milled) and stored in a COOL DRY place. Most fry need to be fed almost continously. Even going over night with out feed causes fry to loose ground. Better to underfeed than overfeed. WATER QUALITY AFFECTS ASSESSMENAT OF FEED QUALITY MORE THAN FEED QUALITY ITSELF FROM WHAT I HAVE SEEN.

Sorry to bring back an old post, but I saw frozen glassworms at petsmart today. Will fish fry eat this? Also, I was out at my little 100 gallon pond, and for the first time, I noticed little daphnia or cyclops or whatever they are swimmin' around. There had to be atleast 200 per square centimeter. Could fry survive off of these as a first food?