For a high survival rate and rapid growth of young fish, a rich baby food is an unconditional prerequisite.
Artificial diets are messier than live food and tend to easily decompose.
This requires time-consuming cleaning of baby cages. As a live food, paramecia are widely used, but contamination is a recurrent problem with paramecia cultures and the preparation of paramecia medium and the harvesting of paramecia is rather time consuming. The protocol can easily be scaled up and should reliably lead to the mass production of baby food. The care of a constant culture of rotifiers takes only a few minutes per day. In contrast to saltwater rotifiers, Brachionus rubens stays alive in the baby tank, does not sink to the ground and will help to keep the tank clean until eaten up.