Vinegar Eels

After all the work on the weekend, not much to be done today so I thought I'd touch base on something which has made life much easier for me during the first week after the fry hatched.

Vinegar Eels

I have three large jars of Vinegar Eels on the go in the fry larder cupboard. When required, I pour part of one of these jars into a long neck container, like this drink bottle.

I fill it up to the base of the neck with the VE medium (solution). I place a fibrous plug in the neck (here I'm using a bit of sponge), with fishing line tied around it to make extraction easier later on, and use a rubberband to secure it in place so the bottom of the plug is just touching the VE medium. That leaves about 5mm of free space between the plug and the top of the bottle. Into the space, I slowly pour some clean aged water - up to where I have the rubber band works for me for one batch of fry.

To harvest, I leave it in the pictured state for about an hour or so, and then shine a torch through the back of the clear area. You'll see thousands of glittering little specs. These are the eels all trying to get to top of the bottle to find air.

They swim up through the apple vinegar solution, wriggle through the fibrous plug, and into the clean water - so when you put in a pipette and suck them out, you only get clean water, and clean eels to feed to your fry.

How to make your medium:

You need to order a starter culture from somewhere, I ordered mine through my local fish shop (LFS) for around $10AU. I ordered two just in case. You really don't need more than one.

It comes in a bag much like a fish does, double bagged and sealed with rubberbands. These bags are inside a plastic container supplied for you to start you culture in.

Get yourself a couple of pickle jars, preferably new unused ones. The ones I found had the false centre in the lid, so you ended up with just the ring with the thread if you so chose - which is what I wanted.

Open the bags carefully. Pour half your starter culture into each jar. Top each jar up with apple vinegar - make sure you get the kind without any added preservatives. I threw in a few pieces of cut up apple as well but this isn't strictly necessary.

Cut up a chux cloth so you have a couple of squares which will fit over the jar tops. Screw them down with the threaded ring.

You now have two cultures. When your fry arrive, pour some of the medium from one of your cultures, into the long neck bottle. Fill your culture back up with apple vinegar.

And there you have it. My long neck bottle lasted for the whole week, for my one batch of fry, providing three meals a day. It was expended by the end of the week, but my little guys were onto frozen baby brine shrimp (BBS) by then.

According to an accepted growth chart sizing, they are spot on where they should be.