# Encouraging critters (live fish food) to live in my NPT



## geeks_15 (Dec 9, 2006)

I have an 80 gallon open top NPT in my basement fishroom. I've had several plants growing above the water level and noticed tiny insects living on the above water leaves. At first I thought this was a minor nuisance, but lately I've noticed my fish chasing and eating tiny little creatures. Then I noticed that my fry grow significantly faster in this tank. Also, I like the idea of live food living in my NPT's. It makes it even more natural in my eyes. 

So I'm wondering how to encourage these little creatures to populate my other fishroom tanks and what I should look out for as far as problems they could cause. 

Also if anyone has other ideas about getting live food to live in the tank, I'd be interested to hear them. I've heard of blackworms living in aquarium substrate and would be interested if anyone has any experience with this.

Thanks,


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## Noto (Oct 26, 2009)

The little critters in the water are most likely microcrustaceans, such as cladocerans and copepods. You can encourage them by feeding small amounts of live yeast, spirulina powder, and finely crushed fish food. They are also easy to raise in separate containers. You may also have rotifers, planaria, etc., which will also thrive in these conditions.

Many of these creatures are sensitive to certain medications and to chemicals such as H2O2, so keep that in mind when treating the tank.

I have had small lumbriculid worms- not necessarily blackworms, but some cousin of theirs- show up in one of my tanks. I assume they were introduced with some creek gravel I added. I removed the fish for a while during a tank renovation and the worm population exploded. Parts of the tank bottom looked like a carpet of worms. They will move soil to the top of the substrate, which is the only negative aspect I have seen with having little critters in the tank.


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## NatalieT (Mar 20, 2007)

geeks_15 said:


> Also if anyone has other ideas about getting live food to live in the tank, I'd be interested to hear them. I've heard of blackworms living in aquarium substrate and would be interested if anyone has any experience with this.


I've got blackworms in my tanks. Basically, I just dumped them in and ignored them.

If you want the exact details, here's how I did it:
I bought the worms at the local fish store--my store sells them by the "shot," so I got one shot. When I got them home, I put them in a shallow container and rinsed the worms several times (add water, dump most of it out, add water, dump most of it out...). At this time, I also looked very closely for anything that wasn't really a worm. I found one different thing (maybe a leech?), so I removed it. Then I gently dumped the worms into my tank, in several different spots. They formed balls on the gravel at first, and a few were draped over plants rather than reaching the bottom at all. Over the next few hours or so, they all disappeared into the gravel, except a few that were still hanging on plants and wiggling all over. My fish (cories) and shrimp hadn't seen worms before, or at least not recently, so it took them some time to try eating the worms. Anytime a fish bumped a ball of worms, the worms would start burrowing into the gravel much faster.

I don't do anything special to feed the worms, except to make sure enough food reaches the bottom of the tank.

When I look in the tank, I can see some of the worms sticking their ends out of the gravel at any time. This has changed over time, as I have changed which fish are in the tank. One cory catfish hunted them vigorously, and they stayed out of sight most of the time; same thing when I had some platties in there. Right now, the tank has some new cories that apparently don't consider worms to be edible, because I see lots of worms, and the fish are ignoring them. (Foolish fish!)

I introduced blackworms to my other tank as well, but I don't usually see them there--it currently houses the fish that aggressively hunt worms, so the worms are either eaten or hiding. Judging by how fat the cories are, I think they're still getting some worms, though, so the worms must just be hiding where I can't see them


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## Tuiflies (Jan 21, 2010)

I use three floating pieces of dw covered in java moss. It makes a nice raft for the snails and many criters like daphnia and cyclops to hang out in and it gives my cray some shade when the lights are on. I culture them as well using a couple of jars with aged tank water, mulm and any dead leaves I clip or find floating. (Note: do not use leaves you clip due to algae because you won't want to transfer the algae back into your tank when you introduce the infusioria.) I've recently noticed some unidentified critters jumping around on the surface of the water like little fleas. If anyone has an idea of what these would be I'm curious to know.


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## Noto (Oct 26, 2009)

Springtails.


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## Tuiflies (Jan 21, 2010)

Cool, thanks.


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## Juergen (Sep 5, 2008)

springtails make nice fishfeed. There are always some white ones living inside my grindal culture and I feed them to the fish too.
regards


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## geeks_15 (Dec 9, 2006)

Thanks for the info so far everyone. I'm still checking this thread if anyone has anymore ideas.


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