Vinegar Eels Care: culture & harvest for Fry food

[Autumnsky]

Vinegar Eels are a good food for tiny fry.

So simple to keep. Require little specialized care, though a little more time to harvest, and they reproduce easily.

Surprisingly, Vinegar Eels are not really Eels. But get their name from the shape of their bodies and how they move around in the vinegar water.

More from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbatrix_aceti

Vinegar Eels can live for a number of days in the FW fish tank. This makes them a great source of available food for fry when they want to eat. Possibly taking a little of the stress off of your mind knowing that they can pick around for live food if you are gone for the day.

Easy to divide and multiply the culture as well.

You can sell starter cultures if you are not raising babies with it.

Pictures will be loaded tomorrow.

Mine came from an auction from our local fish club/Colorado Aquarium Society CAS).

 

[Autumnsky]

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They were packaged in a plastic drinking water bottle approximately half full.

1-2 ounces Vinegar Eel culture concentrate to 5-6 ounces of 50% Bragg's Natural Apple Cider Vinegar and 50% treated tap water. A hole drilled in the lid for O2. Added a slice of Organic Apple.

The next thing to do is remove the lid and add a piece of paper towel with a fish bag rubber band around it to keep it in place and to keep out fruit flies, etc.

Keep them in a cool and dark space, like under a fish tank cabinet. I would suggest in a little container to keep from knocking it over.

I would add a couple very thinly sliced apple slices to the half inch chunk which was already there.

Leave it to grow for as long as you need to. After awhile some months, there will be almost nothing but wiggling creatures in the liquid.

Here is mine after about 2 years and never removing the apple slices. Need to do that pretty soon.

A magnifying glass can be helpful. At any time after about a month you can replicate the process and get about 3 bottles going for cultures. This helps in case of use, or a crash. It is best to get a number of bottles making room and space for happy little Vinegar Eels to breed.

If you actively are wanting to use them for fry I would try to get enough cultures to start 3-6 bottles, up to 12, depending upon if you have a small number of fry to care, like can happen with Angelfish, hundreds of babies!

A cardboard bottle carrier like a six pack of soda or beer might be a big help.

And numbering them to keep track of which ones you harvested. A label on the side where you could write the date might be useful.

Here is a group of 3 new cultures and a refreshed original one:

 

[Autumnsky]

This page reserved for harvesting pics - more to come

The string is sniped in 2 places to tie the bulk filter pad and allow for easy removal.

The filter pad was a used piece rinsed out and the pure water on top was new water treated with Prime.

Roll the filter pad and slide in, but mine was too small so I also folded it so it would plug better.

Cotton string, but people used fishing line too.

The bottle has a nice neck to separate the vinegar culture from the fresh water.

The incorrect thing to do is leave the string long because it wicks water out of the bottle.

It was cut and tied with a loop at the end for removal. A chop stick would work too.

After plugging add treated fresh water over the top like in the pic.

This created a block from the oxygen and the Vinegar Eels work their way through the filter pad to get to air and come up into the fresh water so you can use a turkey baster or a pipette to remove them and add them into your fry tank.

After creating the barrier, then about 5 hours of being away from home for the afternoon/eve, I had this!

The cloudy white spots are the little tiny Eels!!! I fed them 2 times by doing this the same evening, as I have so many fry I wanted to give them all a chance to eat up!

 

[Autumnsky]

This post reserved for additional information. Still a work in progress,

This was SO simple. I can't believe I put off tryng this thinking it would be too hard!

 

[Delapool]

Great read! Are they available at shops to buy or anything?

 

[Autumnsky]

Great read! Are they available at shops to buy or anything?

Around here I haven't seen any shops sell them. But I also never asked them if they had them (at home???). You know how the hobbyists are .

Our CAS members/guys who raise Killifish almost all have them and use them. Along with a bunch of other live foods -spoiled fish.

They originate in the Mother of the vinegar, why the recommendation for Bragg's natural vinegar. But I saw videos of people say they were using the off the shelf pasturized kind. If there was anyone who made their own vinegar you might be able to get them too. You know I will have to look up how to make vinegar from scratch now. Just to know. I can almost guess.

 

[mbkemp]

This is awesome. Thank you

 

[Autumnsky]

You are welcome! Long amount of documenting but fun to do.