Live food for white cloud mountain minnows

White clouds are the beginner’s fish that keeps on giving: hardy in cool water, peaceful, and happy from a nano tank to a patio pond. Live food is where they shine — a scattered feed of moina gets the whole shoal flashing, and their fry, though small, raise easily on the standard worm cultures.

A white cloud mountain minnow (Tanichthys albonubes)

Photo: Ethmostigmus, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The feeding plan

Stage	Feed this	Why it works
Adults, regular feeding	Live daphnia (moina) a few times a week	Perfect mouth-size, and a cool-water culture tub outdoors keeps white clouds and their food at the same temperature
Conditioning	Daphnia + microworms for a week	White clouds scatter eggs in plants and moss; conditioned fish spawn repeatedly through the season
Fry, first 1–2 weeks	Vinegar eels, then microworms	Fry are small and grow slowly in cool water — swimming eels first, microworms as the staple
Fry, grow-out	Newborn daphnia / moina	Move fry up as mouths allow; pond-raised fry often find their own daphnia if a culture corner is seeded

Practical tips

Keep a moina tub near the pond or tank — white clouds thrive unheated, and so does their food for most of the South African year.
Fry appear in spawning mops and moss: move mops to a fry tub or accept a few survivors in a heavily planted tank.
In outdoor tubs, a seeded daphnia corner turns a white cloud pond into a self-feeding system between your harvests.

Watch out: Cool water slows everything, including fry growth and culture production. In winter, bring a backup worm tub indoors so the feeding plan does not stall with the temperature.

Common questions

What do white cloud fry eat?

Vinegar eels for the first days, microworms through weeks 1–3, then newborn daphnia (moina). They grow slower than tropical fry, so keep each stage running a little longer.

Can white clouds live on daphnia alone?

They would happily hunt it daily, but vary the diet: moina as the live staple alongside a small pellet or flake keeps nutrition complete. Live food 3–4 times a week is plenty for pets.