hi everyone i live on a freshwater canal in south florida and in the canal there is large invasive common plecos they are an invasive species here so the florida fish and wildlife conservation commission actually encourages people to catch and kill them to help get then out of our waterways. Ok now with the legal stuff out of the way i have a clown knife warmth sunfish largemouth and peacock bass and a large part of their diet is tilapia with that being said would place meat be a suitable replacemeant for tilapia meat would it have the same nutritional value for my fish or would i really have to worry about diseases all of this is just an idea so that i don't have have to keep buying tilapia but I'm fine to keep doing so if this is not a viable option thanks for reading any input is helpful
pleco meat as fish food???
- Thread starter Peackockbasslove
- Start date
I think it would be ok but you would need to freeze it first to kill any parasites and such.. I would wait to see what others say
do you think that there is any other precautions i could take just to make sure all bacteria is dead??
I'd eat the big ones myself, from what I hear, they taste a bit like lobster (they have a very similar diet to lobsters, and crawfish).
honestly they might not last too bad but my canal runs through many urban areas and there a good bit of polution so i wouldn't eat anything out of it
If you wouldn't eat it because of adverse health risk, why would you give it to your fish?
Pleco meat would be fine as a fish food for piscivores, generally speaking.
I agree, if the quality is so bad that you feel it is unsafe, I wouldn't feed it to my fish.
If it were a parasite issue or something I could see freezing and feeding to the fish and not be willing to eat it myself. But we're talking pollution here. You can't freeze that into being safe.
yeah sadly those canals are filled with manure, pesticide runoff, wouldnt deem them edible for anything. if you catch them out of clean water though, freeze for a few weeks and call it good.
This is kind of left field, but my wife and I were watching Naked and Afraid and the couple caught and ate a large Pleco, a day later they got really sick and had to tap out.