FOOD AND FEEDING 
between the plants and more clean catches made than with the mull net. 
The tank should be prepared with a layer of garden soil mixed with a 
little liquid manure covered with pond mud, on this a thin layer of dead 
leaves, and then filled with water to reproduce pond conditions. Some 
alge, voucheria, wolffa and other small aquatic plants will be introduced 
with the pond mud; and, after stocking, in a short time colonies of shell 
insects, flea lobsters, water multipedes, infusoria, alge etc. will develop 
which should be occasionally replenished by catches in the ponds. 
In a small way a candy or battery jar containing a little pond soil 
and rooted plants, preferably anacharis, will serve; but with ponds or 
ditches nearby, the mull net will usually be all that is required. Care 
should be exercised to prevent introducing predaceous insects and their 
larvee, parasites or other enemies together with this food. 
PRESERVING Natura Foops. It is the practice of breeders to collect 
the entomostraca in quantities when they are plentiful and preserve them 
in a dried state for periods of scarcity. This is done by dipping them 
from the ponds with the net and filling cans with them in almost drained 
condition, adding table salt to prevent their rapid decomposition They 
are then parboiled, strained and evaporated to dryness at low temperature 
or by spreading in the sun in hot weather. This food contains all the 
essentials of the pond animalcule, and will keep almost indefinitely, 
further eliminating all danger of introducing enemies into the rearing tanks. 
In its dried state it is used in the best prepared fish foods. 
PropacaTinG Natura Foop. ‘Theartificial propagation of natural 
food has received considerable attention from the culturists of food fishes. 
These consist of the minute fresh water fauna together with the larve of 
mosquitoes, gnats, mayflies, dayflies, smaller bugs and beetles. Ditches 
in the vicinity of the fish propagating basins, for the cultivation of natural 
food, are prepared with a layer of cow manure in which water plants, in- 
cluding potomogeton, anacharis, cress and confervee are grown, and partly 
filled with brushwood, bricks, stones, etc.; in which the animalcule may 
secrete themselves; and from which they are let into the ponds with the 
water supply. 
FEEDING IN THE AQuaRiuM. To assure success with the aquarium, 
it must not only be in natural balance but the food should be either the 
natural small pond life, or simulate that of nature, and prepared to furnish 
to the living inmates the proper constituents in correct chemical propor- 
tion and easily digestible form. Natural live food should be fed when it 
can be procured, and which may consist not only of the tiny water ento- 
mostraca, but of the larve and pupe of mosquitoes, fly maggots, particles 
ea 
