130 GOLDFISH VARIETIES AND 
When fish have been without fresh or living food for some time it is 
well to occasionally give them a small quantity of scraped raw beef 
(scraped crosswise to grain) or the dark, soft part of oysters, chopped 
and slightly rinsed. Fresh shrimp, obtainable in most fish markets in 
Winter, if passed through a fine meat chopper, makes an excellent change 
of diet. 
LIVING FISHFOODS 
Living fishfoods are divided mainly into larve and crustacea, the 
latter on the whole being the more important and the more generally 
Fic. 83. Dapunia (Greatly enlarged) 
Fic. 84. Mosquito Larva (Greatly enlarged) 
Fic. 85. Eco Rart anp Inprivipuat Ecos (Greatly enlarged) 
Fic. 86. Pupa Berore TRANSFORMING To Mosgurto (Greatly enlarged) 
Fic. 87. Cyctops (Greatly enlarged) 
Fic. 88. Cypris (Greatly enlarged) 
obtainable. Those which are of practical value to the breeder of fancy 
aquarium fishes are few in number. Like the insect enemies of fishes, 
four is the number of really important kinds. 
Daphnia. Undoubtedly the best food for aquarium fishes is living 
daphnia and this should be used at all times in preference to prepared 
foods if obtainable. The fish will consume great quantities of these 
crustaceans without suffering the usual effects of being overfed. A 
certain degree of care must be exercised not to place so much daphnia 
into the aquarium as to suffocate the fish. Daphnia breathe the free 
oxygen in water the same as do fish and therefore too many will soon 
exhaust oxygen from water. The fish will die of suffocation sooner than 
the daphnia. Many fanciers have lost fish in this way. A good practise 
is to give the fish all they can eat in about a quarter of an hour and still 
leave some few daphnia swimming about. 
A popular name for daphnia is “ditch fleas.” This will give a key to 
their appearance, as they are approximately the size and shape of a flea, 
except that they have two rather long, branched swimming arms which 
are always in motion and which gives the animal a sort of hopping 
motion through the water. Without this perpetual swimming the daphnia 
