Ideas for breeding fish in a 10 or 20?

[Crazylegs78]

I'm not opposed to your idea. However, I believe you need a 40B minimum to have any significant quantity of feeders. A 20g just isn't worth it. With a 40B, you could run 3 groups (3 females and one male) of mollies in 12"x18" knitting mesh basket. The fry fall through the mesh, and parents just keep breeding. This should give you enough home grown feeders to have a significant impact on your barracuda diet. Be warned though, once you prime the predatory instincts of a fish, it's there for good. Not a big deal if you're keeping pairs or solos. In a community, it primes all the other fish to eat fry. Just food for thought, no pun intended.

 

[Joshuakahan]

I'm not opposed to your idea. However, I believe you need a 40B minimum to have any significant quantity of feeders. A 20g just isn't worth it. With a 40B, you could run 3 groups (3 females and one male) of mollies in 12"x18" knitting mesh basket. The fry fall through the mesh, and parents just keep breeding. This should give you enough home grown feeders to have a significant impact on your barracuda diet. Be warned though, once you prime the predatory instincts of a fish, it's there for good. Not a big deal if you're keeping pairs or solos. In a community, it primes all the other fish to eat fry. Just food for thought, no pun intended.

Thanks! I think I came up with a solution, I bought a few gold barbs from a trusted source to use as feeders. I didn’t want to try the starvation method of weaning off of live until I was sure the cuda was eating and not just refusing frozen food. He ate the barbs like a beast, so now I’m going to try to wean him. But if it doesn’t work, I talked to a wholesaler friend and he can get me danios at 25 cents each, so I figured I could buy 30 at a time and that should get me through a month for only $7.50 if I feed my other fish first. I can also gut load the danios. But fingers crossed on getting him weaned

 

[The Masked Shadow]

I agree with 2Itiwhetu . However, if you do do this, perhaps consider sailfin mollies. Mine have bred 2 times in 4 months, and they are not in a tank specifically for breeding!

 

[Crazylegs78]

Thanks! I think I came up with a solution, I bought a few gold barbs from a trusted source to use as feeders. I didn’t want to try the starvation method of weaning off of live until I was sure the cuda was eating and not just refusing frozen food. He ate the barbs like a beast, so now I’m going to try to wean him. But if it doesn’t work, I talked to a wholesaler friend and he can get me danios at 25 cents each, so I figured I could buy 30 at a time and that should get me through a month for only $7.50 if I feed my other fish first. I can also gut load the danios. But fingers crossed on getting him weaned

Be careful buying any fish as feeders. The point of breeding your own is not the cost savings, it's the safety against parasite and disease while promoting natural predatory instincts. The reason we quarantine any new fish is because we don't know their history. Feeding fish for which you don't know their history is exponentially dangerous is you want to keep your barracuda alive for a long time. Best of luck!

 

[The Masked Shadow]

I’m sorry, they aren’t sailfin mollies. I actually dont know what they are.

 

[Joshuakahan]

Be careful buying any fish as feeders. The point of breeding your own is not the cost savings, it's the safety against parasite and disease while promoting natural predatory instincts. The reason we quarantine any new fish is because we don't know their history. Feeding fish for which you don't know their history is exponentially dangerous is you want to keep your barracuda alive for a long time. Best of luck!

Thanks!
If I go the danio route, I already have a QT for them. The barbs I got today are from someone I trust, so the risk is minimal. I’m hoping to get him weaned so it’s a nonissue tho…hopefully

 

[fishdance]

Meal worms or cockroaches can be produced in volume for a clean live food source without taking much space or cost. I use fine bran meal for their food source & media which they burrow into. Seive each week to separate out beetles which are transferred to new media. This leaves their eggs behind in old media to hatch out and grow without predation and as each batch are all the same age, there is no bullying and no need to size sorting at harvest.

You can use small mesh covered tanks for culture containers but I prefer large clear plastic bags which I can lay flat and stack quite high as I need a thousand-ish worms per day.

Can scale up or down as you need. Plenty of info available online for mealworm (or roach) production.

Otherwise a garden compost heap for earthworms is excellent. I tried earthworm farms in artificial boxes but I don't have that skill/patience.

 

[Kelly_Aquatics]

I agree with F fishdance . I had a small mealworm farm and it was pumping out probably 1000 mealworms a month which was plenty for my fish and reptile. If you want to automat it a little more you can take two totes and cut the bottom off one of the totes and put window screen mesh on the bottom and cut a hole in the lid of the second tote large enough for the bottom of tote 1 to fit inside. Put a inch or so of oats in both totes and put a starting amount of mealworms in the bottom wait until they pupate and put the pupae in the top container. Eventually all the pupa will turn to beetles and the beetles and worms will be separated. Now when the beetles breed the mealworms will burrow down and fall through the mesh to the the worm bin. Just continue the cycle and you will have more worms than you know what to do with. This design worked very well for me.

 

[C. Breeze]

All your danio, white clouds, barbs, goldfish, shiners, Rosie reds all produce thiaminase. Your barracuda evolved to feed on characins and cichlid young of the year etc rather than cyprinids and will not fair well on a diet that contains thiaminase- which causes all kinds of issues with tissue development, growth, regeneration, degeneration.

Use livebearers or cichlids or both. Feed the young really well, maintain solid growth of algae in the tanks for them to graze on and feed the fry golden pearls, and the highest quality fry foods you can source. Think I would do the livebearers in the 20 gallon full of plants and convicts in the 10 gallon. Keep the convicts fed and remove freeswimming fry after 1-2 week and they should be good for a spawn every 2-3 weeks. You won’t be feeding big feeders more like feeding brine shrimp- but your barracuda will eat them. And what are you trying to do- grow a cuds or grow out fry. Hatch them or let them drop and feed them off.

my pike cichlids all eat pellets- but they all eat a ton of gambusia, tree frog tadpoles in season, and baby HRPs as well. Even piscivores are opportunistic and will eat anything they believe is food eventually.

 

[Crazylegs78]

Meal worms or cockroaches can be produced in volume for a clean live food source without taking much space or cost.

My festae love the dubia roaches I culture for my bearded dragon. Every fall when the dragon goes into brumation, the festae take over population control. Two productive storage bins of roaches is a lot! I would say 6-8 roaches per day could be fed if the cultures were kept warm in winter.