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Title: Culturing Live Foods: A Step-By-Step Guide to Producing Food for Your Home Aquarium
ISBN: 0793806550
Author:
Michael R. Hellweg
Publicate Date: 2008-06
Publish: 2008-06
List Price: $35.95
Average Customer Rating: 5.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $22.54
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $25.41
Amazon Merchant Price: $23.73
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Something different for the avid aquarium owner.
If you've ever seen your aquarium fish look hungry for more, then Michael R. Hellweg's Culturing Live Foods: A Step-by-Step Guide for Culturing One's Own Food for the Home Aquarium is for you. It tells how to make happier fish by cultivating live foods they like - plants, multi-celled organisms, crustaceans, mollusks and worms - over 80 such foods in all. Culture methods, materials needed, color sidebars of reference information and more make for discussions of species, care, and what kinds of aquarium fish they can feed. Libraries specializing in aquarium owner's guides will find this offers something different for the avid aquarium owner.
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2: Highly informative, easy to read.
The information contained in this book will prove invaluable to anyone interested in maintaining or breeding just about any species of tropical fish,and it is written in a down to earth style that is very easy to understand.
You can't go wrong with this book.
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3: Fabulous book
This is a terrific, up-to-date resource by Mike Hellweg, a master fish breeder whose success with fish is built on his success in feeding his fish appropriate live foods.
I've been discussing the culture of various live foods with Mike for several years now, and studying a lot of what has been easily available on the internet, and even put together my own web page reviewing the techniques I've used with my own cultures. But this book has already given me new tips and tricks on creatures I thought I knew all about, and given me confidence to try some that I've failed with in the past. The details are just right to enable success with each organism, and there are good sources for more information if you want or need it.
This book is also an excellent primer on spawning fish, because several species are discussed as easily bred feeders for larger fish. Those are tips you can use to propagate those and related species for your own enjoyment even if you don't keep predatory fish.
I can't recommend this highly enough for the aquarist who wants to keep and spawn happy, healthy fish.
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4: Great Info !
I'm really happy to see this book. It's been a long time since we have had updated comprehensive information. This is presented beautifully and very well written. Any serious Aquarist should plan on this book for their collection. You won't be disappointed.
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5: "Culturing Live Foods"
Culturing Live Foods
By
Michael R. Hellweg
Since Mike Hellweg is an old and valued friend/colleague in the tropical fish hobby, my opinions about his new book "Culturing Live Foods" may be a little biased - although they really need not be. "Culturing Live Foods" is a much-needed, and excellently written book, and it is an important contribution to the aquarium hobby. Mike is well known throughout the hobby as not only an accomplished writer, but also a master breeder, and he shares with us the fact that much of his success in breeding fishes comes from giving live foods to both the breeders, and the offspring.
"Culturing Live Foods" starts with a very interesting discussion of the history of fish foods, and the reasons for feeding live foods today, even though we have a wide variety of excellent frozen and dry foods available to us. The book then discusses the tools and containers needed, and getting starter cultures, for live foods. The foods themselves start with the smallest ones that are used - phytoplankton, or "Green water". Protozoans, or "infusoria" are then discussed, and then somewhat larger foods such as copepods, rotifers and vinegar eels. Much space is devoted to brine shrimp, which is fitting as they are probably the most common live food in the hobby. Mike discusses hatching, enriching and growing live brine shrimps to adults, as well as decapsulating the cysts (eggs).
As the book progresses we move up in size for the live foods, from worms (whiteworms, tubifex, blackworms and earthworms) to snails and crustaceans such as daphnia, moina and mysis shrimps. Other shrimps such as glass or grass shrimps and various species of Neocaridina are covered. Insects are the next category, and they include flour beetles, fruit flies, mealworms and mosquito larvae - including the constant battle between hobbyists and spouses about whether the standing water that has been left out was left there on purpose or by mistake, the net effect being a nice population of mosquito larvae that the hobbyist finds terrific for feeding fish, and the spouse sees only as a source of biting insects. The final group of live foods are fish, and here Mike mentions the problems with buying feeder fish from the local fish store (or bait store), and he strongly suggests that hobbyists raise their own feeder fish if at all possible.
Mike's book is packed with a wealth of detailed information, and yet it is much more than a simple "How To" book. It is an interesting, well written and very informative book, and covers all aspects of live foods, from starting cultures to collecting foods from the wild. There is an excellent group of resources at the end of the book in terms of related books, magazines, Internet sites and suppliers of live foods and cultures. "Culturing Live Foods" should be in the library of any fish hobbyist who wants to keep, and breed, fish successfully.
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