Here are a few choices that any new fish parent has in feeding to his new expanded "family"

- Liquifry comes in a bottle, and in two versions, Livebearer and Egglayer. Of course, with goldies we wonna go with the egglayer food. Just be careful not to add too much in the fry tank all at once, otherwise you are gonna get a mess.
- Eggyolk You can use the eggyolk of a hardboiled egg, crumble it in tiny winy pieces, add a few drops of water,mix it and off you go.....Same warning as with theliquifry - not too much, otherwise its a mess.
- Microworms are falling under the category of better quality fry food, and once obtained you can re-cultivate it over and over again. I got mine fromAquatic Ecosystems. All they need is a container oatmeal, mix it to a mixture with water, add yeast and the worm culture, and in a couple of days you see the tiny little things marching up the sides ofyour container. One swipe with a spoon or the finger, and you have 100s of the worms to worms to feed to your babies. I found those worms the best to catch, even for the weaker fry, since the worms are very slow moving, not like freshly hatched brine shrimp.
- Freshly hatched brine shrimp are another high quality food source for the fry. Eggs and salt are easily obtained in any petstore, just mix them togethr via instructions on the package, airstone in it, and done....Starsmom even tried it without airstone, and it worked just fine ....(See post below)
- frozen freshly hatched brine shrimp from SFB found in the freezer section of Petsupermarket, and probably other pet stores as well. Come in cubes, and eliminates the whole hatching process for you, its already done. Just pop a cube and feed it to the fry.
- Hikari First Bites provide complete and balanced nutrition for all the important development stages of your fry's life. They also promote proper feeding habits, long term health, and superior disease resistance, allowing your fry to grow rapidly without fear of dietary deficiencies. Slow sinking granules are great for all the newborn fish..(taken from the HIkari website). A few members have had great success with this food as well....

Anybody know of other great fry food, feel free to add on....

Hey there andrea,

liquifry are now doing a powder food similar to hikari first bites, its called liquifry 3

Kev!! A well researched new daddy!

a well researched new daddy, about to go onto his next level

Hello and thank you for your valuable input here! I especially liked your suggestion in case of power outage! we have that happen alot here.

Also the info about fry food, since we are new parents and very new to this, it is our first batch.... We have Shubunkins and Black Moor and Telescope, think the eggs are from the two Shubunkins, one is Calico one is Silver with orange and grey spots. They are about 4" long without tails.

We have the babies in a baby basket hanging in the parents 60 gallon tank, and feeding them, but it doesnt' seem they are eating all that much yet? Think today is day 3.... There are 6 fry right now. Should we see them eating right away after feeding? We are giving the liquid fry for egg layers and livebearers so far. Will add boiled egg yolks soon. Just don't know how much to feed them since they are so tiny right now?\

Don't want to under or overfeed, better to overfeed?

any tips for us? thank you!

Lynn

Lynn, the first 3 days or so the fry does not eat at all. It has a little sac attached to it, that contains all the nutrients it needs for the first few days, and after that it needs to be fed. Any food you through in while its still living off of the sac, its gonna be a waste, since the fry will not eat it.
YOu only need the egglayer fry food. And when the fry are hungry, yes, you should see them go after the food pretty much right away. The liquid food, as well as the egg yolk, tends to get a bit messy when fed too much. With just 6 fry, all you need is one drop of the liquifry, that contains so many tiny particals, it should get them eating for a while.

ok so today i finally managed to find some FROZEN baby brine shrimp..... it owns !!!!!!!

sooooooooo easy and seems like it will last forever, real cheap and very very good, i will still feed live fresh hatched but now theres no worry to get them hatched, if i dont have time i can just use these... yayyyyyyyyyyyy

A++++ for frozen baby brine

So your fry are grown to be 1" or better. Time to step up to grown-up food but mouths are still too small? Can find these at a kitchen gadget section of department stores.

Feeding our favorite pellet or flake food to fry can be easily accomplished with a pepper mill or ceramic cheese grater.

Pellets and flake we use for our big goldfish are usually too big for fry. So, we need to crush it or soak and mush it before feeding to the fry. Often time we don't get the uniform coarseness we need desire. Here are two common kitchen tools that will help get that exact size you need consistently.

For pellets, try using a pepper mill. (Use a new one or clean out the pepper really good else your goldfish fry will have a real bad case of heartburn.) Spoon in what you need for the day and grate the amount of food you need directly into the tank. Most pepper mills have an adjustment nut to give you the coarseness desired.

For flakes, place a pinch of food on the ceramic grater. Rub your finger over between the flakes and the raised nubs of the grater until you get the coarseness desired.

all the fry ive fed liquifry hadnt started growing for about 4 weeks after they hatched. i had just as much success feeding crushed flakes and pellets. egg yolk i had more success with. algea is surprisingly good too. the best so far that ive tried is the fresh hatched brine shrimp. its totally fool proof and the fry grow faster and it teaches them to hunt for their food therefore making them stronger as they chase them. fun to watch too

Ive seen baby goldfish fry eat boiled potatoe skins at my friends house it was very entertaining they swarm all ove rit then when they dispersed it was all gone

i dont have fry yet

I tried to hatch brine shrimp before and it was a total bust. I got nothing. And I am the type of person who follows instructions down to a "T". I've looked all over and can't find frozen baby brine shrimp, so where could I get it? Also, could I use freshwater brine shrimp, I was told I could if I couldn't hath the others.

The problem with the store bought eggs are that the hatching rate is very lousy at times. On Aquabid.com you can get eggs with a lot higher hatching rate (a bit more expensive though).
The other thing I saw at Petsupermarket since a few months ago are frozen, freshly hatched brine shrimp. They are the same thing than you would hatch them yourself, and you can feed them right away, since they are already hatched.....

I tried feeding Daphnia to my frys and it works perfectly well. You really see them growning by the mm everyday and lots of poops (means they are eating well). Baby brine shrimp is not available in our area so the other alternative is Daphnia. It is rather difficult to keep this small creature alive as they die very fast in a clean tank of aireated water. Daphnia is fed to the frys after about 10 days after hatching. The first week is on crushed egg yolk and very messy as the un-eaten yolk will be covered with fungus after a day or two.
Cheers...

when the fry get bigger, you cant get better than mosquito larvae. they grow really quickly on them.

Is it possible to feed frys some peas? They are about 8 weeks old.I was just curious...

My tip on syphoning uneaten food is to use a medicine droper. This way, you don't accidentally suck up your fry.

I wonder why the micron food (Sera), won't sink unless mixed into the water well. Can goldfish eat from the surface? And will they pick food from the bottom of the tank?

I would be careful with feeding floating food so early in their lifes. It causes swim bladder problems and gulping for air later on. If you can, stay away from anything that floats entirely. I avoid it like the dickens, baby or adult fish..

thanks for the info it will come in handy tomorrow when i will have to fed all 500 3 week old gold fish (...so much work to do for such little things )

1. How long before you siphon the food off the aquarium when feeding fry?
2. 3 day old - so they only eat liquid or eggyolk?
3. When do we start feeding them hatched brine shrimp? Tried to feed them today, hatched for the 3rd day only ...don't quite know if they were eating but there definitely was some movement.

Mary-Ann, you can feed those hatched brine shrimp from the very first day, after the fry have used up their egg sac. Its a very good food, and I usually prefer that over liquid, or egg yolk. Those are just replacements in case you can't find anything like the brine shrimp eggs. In some Petsupermarket stores, they also have freshly hatched brine shrimp as small cubes in their freezer section as well. Pop out one cube, and drop it into the tank - no hatching required. Butt those frozen foods are only good for smaller batches, if you have a large number of fry, you buy frozen brine shrimp until your wallet is sadly empty. Hatching them yourself saves quite some money.

Oh, about the syphoning - whenver I see waste laying around on the tank bottom, I clean it up. Depending on how much you feed them and how many you got, that's done daily.

Hi all,

I currently have some Ryukin fry, 20 days old. Hatched about 800 (I use handspawning) and now decreased the total to around 200 through hard culling. (I believe that you have to be cruel to be kind, otherwise you will never establish grade fish).
Am quite happy with the growing rate; feed 3 times daily + daily 20% water change.
Started off with squeezing egg-yolk for the 1st 3-4 days and then to newly hatched brine shrimps.
Just started to add a little of my gel recipie (mainly based on greens & mussels), finely crushed and some soaked powdered fry food.
At 20 days fry ranging between 5/8" - 7/8".

Best regards

JohnF - Malta

Hi there, John, and !

Looks like you are having a handle on this fry stuff quite good! Do you have a picture of the parents? I love nice quality ryukin, and wonder what a Malta ryukin looks like... And yes, culling is very neccessary to get quality goldfish out of a batch. As harsh as it might sound to a novice, as a breeder, or anybody interested in better quality fish, it is a must.

If you drop in a cube of frozen brine shimp - what makes them "float" around such that the babies get to them? The fry do not feed off the bottom nor off the surface. So that chunk just sits there? What makes it "go"?

Do you thaw it in a cup - stir it up and feed?

Tnx for your warm welcome Ranchugirl.

Sorry but do not have any pics at the moment. The ryukins used for the batch mentioned above are in fact quite new. I just got them from Thailand about 6 weeks ago; aa grade; approx 2.5" (I hate buying large fish) with a very nice distinctive hump and a high erect dorsal. In fact I used a red & white female and the milt of two red males. As said, these Thai fish, although a bit expensive, are quite nice. I actually bought 12 - 7 are great, 1 is very nice but will not be using 'him' for breeding since he has only 1 anal fin and the other 4 are Calicos. The Calicos are also nice specimens to look at, but in my opinion they lack most of the true Ryukin characteristics.

Cheers

John

btw have been goldfish fanatic for these last 40 years and have done some judging in local fish shows.
I can assure you that the Maltese goldies are quite similar to Asian and American specimens

i am feding my fry crushed tetra pond pellets as the adults are fed on the uncrushed ones seems to be working ok :-) when they are bigger i hope to have some photos of the fry they are still about small for me to do that though. as they are only three weeks old but getting there.