2/9/2023: A bug keeper tries his hand at fish keeping

Though the days are getting longer, the doom and gloom of winter usually hits hardest at this time of year. Last year I was proactive in staving off the blues and revisited an old “hobby” in aquaculture, devoting a rack in the bug room to various aquatic projects.

It may come as a surprise to many that my start to keeping animals was with fish keeping, and I often bemuse folks with the adage that before roaches, I was into loaches.

Years of keeping invertebrates atop the foundation of fish keeping culture has empowered me to try some new approaches. In the last decade, many fish keepers have shifted away from overly filtered, micromanaged, and scrubbed tanks to more “natural” set ups. Some allow algae to grow, and the popularity of freshwater shrimps has pushed forward a new age of smaller, more bioactive aquariums.

I have been blessed in a way I had only dreamed of in years prior. Upon receiving some aquatic plants from the local fish store last year, a tiny green hitchhiker has colonized my set-ups. These little chrinonomid midges, the foundation of many freshwater food chains, feed on algae and detritus. The adults are so short-lived that I have seen them eclose, mate, and die within a few hours. The larvae enumerate in my fish tanks, providing free high quality food for whatever I keep. With my high lumen lighting, I have little work to do to feed my fish, and they have joined the ranks with the roaches and isopods as non-canine animals in my care that are supplemented primarily with dog food.

I will eventually send some adults of these midges off for identification, and from there believe they will be an extremely valuable asset to fish keepers looking to raise an abundance of species. Live foods are consistently an element of success with many fish, tied with periods of neglect/fewer cleanings followed by large water changes. Considering the adult stage of these midges is not a nuisance with its short life span and limited flight ability, this species is ripe to be an excellent tool to aquaculture.

-Kyle