the permission of the owner). Depending on the season,
I can harvest Daphnia, Cyclops, and small white and black
mosquito larvae. I feed some to my fishes immediately
and freeze the rest.
If you are unable to collect food yourself, you can buy
live or frozen food in a variety of sizes. The small foods
can be fed whole, and the larger ones can be chopped
up in a blender. If you have enough space and time you
can also grow live food—for example, Moina (Japanese
water fleas), Grindal worms, and the like. However, for
some people, live food culturing can be more work thanfishkeeping itself. Artemia nauplia are not exactly cheap,
but they are always available.
Blue-eyes that are not used for breeding do not need
to be fed every day if they are kept in established tanks
with live plants. I recommend feeding them five times a
week and giving them only the amount of food that they
will eat within a few minutes.Breeding your own blue eyes
Many of us eventually want to preserve or increase our
fish stock by breeding our fishes, and we enjoy observingAMAZONAS
TOP: H.-G. EVERS; BOTTOM: R. HUSSMANN
The partners enter the substrate
to spawn. The process only takes
a few seconds.Female blue-eyes, such as this P. g e r t r u d a e “Dekai,”
have short, pale fins. They can be easily distinguished
from the very colorful, long-finned males.