At your age I shoveled snow, mowed lawns and carried newspapers to stores. You are ahead of me, because I'm not sure that I had other than a collection of bowls until Christmas of the year I was 13.

There are live foods a lot better than or just as good as brine shrimp, even for your fry. I am really impressed that you are considering them.

Some of these projects are a little messy - such as digging up earthworms and dicing them on a piece of glass with a sharp knife until the pieces are guppy size. (I've been years looking for a multi-bladed salad chopper.) You can also go out at night with a flashlight, though that is mostly for night crawlers. I rarely dig in the garden but when planting stuff this time of the year I keep a rinsed yogurt cup with me to toss them in.

Another possible project - please clear this with your parents first - is using different sized mosquito larvae first. You will need two buckets (we got ours from a bakery, they held pie filling). You will also need a couple of clean jars (see Airless "Filters") and a fine meshed net. Hagen sells a blue one in many stores. I have bought a variety of sizes in white from on-line stores like http://www.jehmco.com/
and
http://www.jonahsaquarium.com/

I am sure there are lots of others.

Oh! And for a $9 sieve set (for your birthday) see
http://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/

(They will suggest a lot about hatching b.b.s.)

For a few ideas on mosquitoes please look here:
http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/management/Davis_Mosquitoes.html

The idea is that you put one of the buckets in an out of the way corner of the yard, perhaps shielded from prying eyes by shrubs. Your goal is to collect EVERY mosquito larvae by the time that they are a certain size.

Then you have a good argument for doing what you are doing. Not only are you feeding your fish inexpensive and nutritious food, but you are luring the mosquitoes into laying their eggs where NONE of them will every hatch into a flying blood sucker.

If you see those little "pieces of charcoal that look like they were scraped out with a fingernail" those are mosquito eggs. They can be hatched in a jar of aquarium water and poured into your fry bowl or tank. If there are no snails, the egg rafts can be put right into the fry tank to hatch and be devoured.

There are more great live foods ideas. If you can get a culture of Daphnia, they will do good outside on decaying leaves. Google culturing Daphnia.

Through your public library you can inter-library loan the Baensch Aquarium Atlas Vol 1.

Other Great books with info on living foods include reprints of Charles Masters Encyclopedia of Live Foods. That wonderful book is long out of print and very expensive now. However it is available (black and white photocopy) from http://www.lfscultures.com/

That place is also a great source of live food cultures, as is http://www.livefoodcultures.com
Also look in the want ads in the back of all of the aquarium magazines.

Some may be purchased through the Aquatic Bookstore
http://www.seahorses.com/index.shtm

See also the PLANKTON CULTURE MANUAL 6TH EDITION
from Florida Aqua Farms

https:/3kserver7.com~frank/secure/agora.cgi

(I don't know why that will not copy correctly. Copy that in or Google Florida Aqua Farms and go from there.)

Two other very useful but out of print, (paperback) books are found in libraries and on-line sometimes:

Needham JG. et al. Culture Methods for Invertebrate Animals. (Dover Press, about 1960)

Live Foods for the Aquarium and Terrarium by Willy Jocker. (TFH Press, about 1972)

For yet more, also visit http://faq.thekrib.com/live-food.html