How to Breed Vinegar Eels And Use For Livefood

Vinegar eels are tiny, non-parasitic, free living nematodes. They feed on even smaller microorganisms that live in and eat apple cider vinegar.

Vinegar nematode or Vinegar Eels (Turbatrix aceti) are an excellent live food source that are super easy to culture. Every serious fish breeder should have some on hand. Once you get the hang of things, you can forget about your vinegar eel culture for a month or two and it will still be in great shape for when you need to use it. Let's start off with some Vinegar Eel highlights before we get into culturing information.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Vinegar Eel Starter Culture.
• Culturing Container.
• Aged Aquarium Water.
• Apple Cider Vinegar.
• Aquarium Fish Net.
• Rubber Bands.

1. 
    
   Fancy guppy fry love to hunt Vinegar Eels.

   • Vinegar Eels swim and wiggle through the water column triggering the fish's natural instincts to hunt. Unlike other live fish foods, vinegar eels live for at least 2 days in your fish tank water which makes them a cleaner choice for your aquarium.
   
   • Vinegar Eels can live and breed at room temperature.
   
   • Vinegar Eels are a little bit smaller than micro-worms, which is an excellent size for most baby fish.
   
   • Vinegar Eels are cleaner than many other worms in general (when keeping them and feeding them to your fry.)
   
   • You can keep Vinegar Eel cultures in a dark corner of your fish room on a shelf and they will constantly supply you with a natural live food source for your
   tiny fry.
   
   • Smaller fish like guppies will eat Vinegar Eels if the lighting is bright enough, allowing the fish to spot the tiny worms.

2. • Never use regular/plain clear vinegar or treated vinegar when culturing Vinegar Eels. ** You can only use Apple cider vinegar! **
   
   • High or low temperature extremes slow or halt the breeding cycle of vinegar eels
   and can also kill them.

3. Keep flies and other pests out of your cultures!
   
   Flies and other bugs such as gnats will bring mold and fungus spores into
   your culturing containers. This is an awful experience that might
   cause some aquarists to give up on culturing Live Foods altogether.
   Gnats and smaller flies can get through even the smallest of holes that
   you might have poked into the lids of your culture containers for
   air-holes.
   
   Here are some cheap and effective materials for keeping flies out of your livefood cultures.
   
   • Filter floss or mesh that is made for extra filtration material for aquarium filters. This is excellent for keeping pests out and still allows your cultures to
   breath fresh oxygen.
   
   • Aquarium netting a.k.a. Brine shrimp net has very small holes. This is perfect for blocking bugs out (or cultures in) and allows for sufficient oxygen exchange to take place within the container. Secure onto culturing container using a Rubber Band.
   
   • Paper Towels are always cheap and easy. Secure the Paper Towel in place with a Rubber Band.

4. Any kind of fish safe/non-toxic container will work for housing your Vinegar Eel cultures in. Clear plastic, empty 2 or 3 liter soda bottles are cheap and easy. You can also see what is going on inside of the container.
   
   Wash out and rinse bottles with hot water, never use soap or bleach when working with living creatures!
   
   Fill the bottle a 1/4 way full of water and then another 1/4 of the way full of Apple Cider Vinegar. At this point the bottle is only half way full.
   Then add a starter portion of Vinegar Eels. It only takes a few Vinegar Eels to start a thriving colony.
   
   In a week or two, fill the rest of the bottle up with equal parts of apple cider vinegar and water.
   
   * Do not fill your culturing bottles all of the way up to the top. You need to leave plenty of surface area open for oxygen exchange. *
   
   * This dilutes any toxins and is a great way of doing a super easy partial water
   change for the vinegar eels without changing any water. *
   
   You can also try using pure apple cider vinegar with no water for your Eels.

5. 
    
   Day Old, Boiled Water is Vinegar Eel Safe.

   Use fish-safe water! You can use bottled water for Vinegar Eels, or use whatever water is available.
   
   Also use rain water, boiled (then cooled) tap water, aged aquarium water, or Reverse Osmosis water.
   
   Try to dechlorinate or age the water for a day or two before adding it to any cultures.

6. Sub-culturing Vinegar Eels is very easy. Simply repeat the steps used for culturing the Vinegar Eels in the first place.
   
   Start new cultures for your Vinegar Eels at least every 2 months. (more often if your culturing container is smaller than 2 liters) Re-fill evaporating or lost water/vinegar with new water or apple cider vinegar.

7. Instead of restarting cultures so often, try adding more apple cider vinegar and water.
   
   Use a larger container to keep your vinegar eels in and you can change out or restart cultures less often.
   
   About 4 times a year, use a turkey baster to suck out (some - 25%) of the gunky mulm at the bottom of the culture.

8. The mulm that settles at the bottom of the container is not harmful to the
   Vinegar Eels, and many aquarists say that this is a source of food for
   the Eels. The mulm is waste from the eels as well as dead eels and such.
   
   Vinegar Eels might eat small pieces of apple.
   
   If you feed your vinegar eels apples, you might need to clean some of the
   decaying apple out more often.

9. Feeding Vinegar Eels is very easy. The Eels eat the mulm in the apple-cider vinegar and possibly the actual apple cider vinegar itself. Don't
   add anything else to the culture except for water and apple cider
   vinegar and you should have huge cultures of Eels! Some aquarists add
   small amounts of apple juice or small pieces of apple in their Vinegar
   Eel cultures and they claim to have great results and many Vinegar
   Eels. * Adding apples into a culture might get pretty nasty. *

10. Feed the Vinegar Eels to your fry!
    
    Harvesting the Eels is where some people get discouraged, we all might be a bit spoiled due to the ease of commercial flake foods. The fact that we have to separate the Vinegar Eels from the Apple Cider Vinegar before we can feed them to our fry can seem like a pain in the rear.
    
    The easiest way is using a turkey baster to suck up as many of the Eels as you would like and then filtering out the liquid using a coffee filter. Add any drained liquid back into your eel culture, as it still most likely has tiny eels in it.
    
    Swish the coffee filter in your aquarium water, letting the eels swim free.
    You can take additional steps to clean the vinegar off of the Eels such as an extra rinsing.

11. 
     
    Healthy culture of Vinegar Eels.

    Until you get the hang of things and find your Vinegar Eel groove things might be a little awkward. I assure you, if you keep at it and don’t give up on your new Eels you will surely find Vinegar Eels to be an excellent and easy source of Live Food!

Tips & Warnings

• Vinegar Eels don't smell funny or get nasty like other worm cultures sometimes do.
• Care for a Vinegar Eel culture properly and they will multiply like crazy!
• Never use regular/plain vinegar or treated vinegars when culturing Vinegar Eels. You can only use Apple cider vinegar!
• High or low temperature extremes can slow or halt the breeding process of vinegar eels and can also kill the vinegar eels.

Resources

• How to Culture Vinegar Eels And Use As Live Fish Food
• How to Culture Grindal Worms Without Dirt

[SunnyStars]

on 2/7/2009 *Thanks for the comments everyone!* Vinegar eels are so small that adult fish can't eat them. Betta fry will surely eat vinegar eels. I would recommend live Grindal Worms for adult Betta Splendens. These worms are the perfect size for adult bettas and similar sized fish like adult guppies. They will eat grindal worms quickly!

[showpup]

on 2/4/2009 Thanks for the vast information on the vinegar eels. Would this be a suitable food source (in addition to reg. diet) for adult betta splendins? I don't plan to breed them but thought they may enjoy live food. 5 stars

[HairCrazy]

on 1/28/2009 Great information! Thanks!

[Vanillatte]

on 1/28/2009 Very detailed article on how to breed vinegar eels!

[resar]

on 1/28/2009 Great article with very clear steps.