I raise wingless fruit flies(aka gnats) to feed my fish. the fish love them. I will even explain a simple trap you can make to catch and feed these pesky critters to your fish. Take any bottle(2 liter, juice(32oz), ect.). Put a piece of an over ripe bannana in it and wait. When it gets a lot of gnats in it put the cap on it and stick it in the freezer. The gnats freeze and die or you can just chill them so they can not fly and sprinkle them on top of the water. If you freeze them thaw them before feeding. With the wingless ones I feed them alive since they can not fly and be a pest in the house.

  Earthworms are high in fats and protiens making them one of the best conditioning foods for breeding tropical fish. The only problem here is size of food and size of fish. For many fish like guppies they need to be rinsed and chopped into bite sized pieces. This does not bother me but many people it does. I also raise grindal worms which are a small version of earth worm which is white in color. No chopping required for guppies and that sized fish.

  Watch feeding to much live food as you can spoil your fish so they do not take flake food well. I got fish that have never seen flake food except as a gut load for grindal worms.

 A very easy food to raise that has not been mentioned that can even replace baby brine shrimp(BBS) is daphnia. Daphnia give live birth as long as the conditions are right and the new born daphnia are slightly larger the BBS. All I do during warm weather is take my water from partial water changes and put it outside in the sun. The water turns green. I then pour this water into the daphnia tank sitting outside in the sun. You will not get many mossy larva this way due to the water getting hot and the bright light but I do catch a few. Then use a BBS net to catch some for your fish. One reason for letting the water turn green first is I strain it to collect and mossy larva before they can develope. If the daphnia culture is strong there will not be many mossy larva and when I do scoop out some daphnia I try and catch all the comma shaped ones I see. Indoor culture is not much different with descent lighting but tends to be slower on producing green water. So I have to feed then some yeast that has been activated in warm water. It does not take many to make millions. All of them are females as long as the conditions are good and all produce clones. The give birth to 4-22 live female daphnia every 4 days and it takes them only a week to become mature. Their live cycle is sort of like brine shrimp as they also produce a resting egg(cyst) when either their pool is drying up or the food runs low by producing males and laying eggs.

 All bugs that fish will eat that I have tried have cause no problems. Some say do not feed any kind of beetle. But there is a small beetle that my fish have eaten and nothing happened. Some beetles though are like some ants and use chemical warfare to keep from being eaten and I a sure the larger ones may have thick enough shells to cause problems.

 I feel all should feed their fish live foods but since I can not change everyone I suggest you feed flake food along with live foods so that all fish you sell/give/trade will eat flake foods for their new owners.