Z M Fry Food

Clive Stott

I have completed a personal trial on Z.M. fry feeds. Because as a hobbyist who takes on breeding tropical fish as a challenge I needed to find an easier way of feeding newly hatched fry than all the traditional ways employed by myself over 50 years of fishkeeping.

At the beginning of 2000 I had a successful spawning of Harlequins. I could not find any retail outlet that stocked traditional brine shrimp cysts. This prompted me to scour the magazine ads. In PFK I came across one inserted by Z.M. I phoned up my order for one 50g brine shrimp cysts premium grade, which duly arrived along with samples of Z.M. fry feeds. I told my friend Ken Wrightson, who was also suffering "brine shrimp syndrome”. He was just as impressed with the product and service he received from Rohan Mac of Z.M. I must confess at this point I did not pay much attention to the samples Rohan had sent me with my brine shrimp order. Later on in the year I decided to shut down my fishkeeping activities, as I knew I would be out of the country for a fair part of 2001 and did not wish to burden any other person with looking after a dozen or more tanks for that period of time.

We were down in Dorset to see in 2002 and found an aquarium shop just outside Ringwood that had a tank full of large supposedly wild caught Rams of which I purchased six specimens. I also bought four Dutch Rams from a local shop, put them all together in a four foot tank and within a week one wild male Ram and one female Dutch Ram showed a lot of interest in each other. They were then removed to an 18x10x10 bare tank furnished only with a 3” terracotta flowerpot. Within a week the pair had spawned and eaten the eggs. A week later they spawned again. This time a week later the young fry were hopping about in the flowerpot. In the meantime the brine shrimp were failing to hatch. I understand this was because l did not keep the container tightly closed and in a fridge for the past year. I telephoned Rohan to order some more brine shrimp and had a good chat. This is when I made up my mind to try using Z.M. fry feeds. Here are the very satisfying results from the first successful Ram spawning.

28/01/02 : spawned after 6 days about 50 young fed on Z.M. with limited amounts of micro worm and brine shrimp. Although the Z.M. 100 sank to the bottom the young Rams browsed it and cleared it up within a couple of hours. Another small portion of Z.M. 100 was fed without the live food and again it had all gone within a couple of hours. Third feed was in the evening with limited amounts of live food.

I have to point out here that the main bulk of the feeding was Z.M. 100. I continued this diet and pattern of feeding until the end of February. I then upgraded their diet to Z.M. 200 and chopped tubifex. The same feeding pattern was employed. Two weeks after this the diet was changed again but the pattern is now Z.M. small high protein granular feed morning and night, tubifex or frozen blood worm at midday from 28/01/02 until now 1/04/02. The young Rams are 32mm long and the sex can be determined. There is a second brood coming along three weeks behind the first brood, produced by the same female but a different mate. I culled this brood from about 150 down to 50 fry. They are now 19mm. long.

I also have a small spawning of Harlequins, about 30 in number that were fed on Z.M. 000 to start with. This replaced the need for infusoria or liquifry. At present they are on Z.M. 100 and are just over 3 weeks old and 1Omm in length and are now like mini Harlequins fed exclusively on Z.M. products.

These youngsters get a 10 per cent water change about once a week. There has not been any adverse discolouring or loss of water quality during this trial. The shelf life of this product is up to six months.

Clive Stott