NEED HELP! NEW TO SITE.

predatorkeeper87

Potamotrygon
MFK Member
Sep 8, 2014
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What's the issue with feeders? Disease?? I live on an acre and a half pond and would catch baby blue gill and feed them to my fish. They loved them just as much. My Dempsey is a male I know that. I already have a bristle nose Pleco in the tank. Love him ( although he seems to be very aggressive and territorial over spot. Driving fish out of cavs constantly. Has anyone else ever herd of that?)
that's even worse. wild fish carry pathogens that our pet fish have zero immunity to. I'm impressed they didn't give your fish anything.
 

Oddballs

Plecostomus
MFK Member
Oct 21, 2014
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What's the issue with feeders? Disease?? I live on an acre and a half pond and would catch baby blue gill and feed them to my fish. They loved them just as much. My Dempsey is a male I know that. I already have a bristle nose Pleco in the tank. Love him ( although he seems to be very aggressive and territorial over spot. Driving fish out of cavs constantly. Has anyone else ever herd of that?)
Eventually it catches up with ya. You don't know what kind of diseases the bluegill feeders have. If something starts to infect the feeders without your knowledge then your aquarium fish get them. The JD also shouldn't be eating live they need a different diet then that. Plus you just stated that you buy feeders which are going to have diseases from being stressed during transport.
 
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Fish_tank_dude_96

Black Skirt Tetra
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Feb 15, 2017
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Eventually it catches up with ya. You don't know what kind of diseases the bluegill feeders have. If something starts to infect the feeders without your knowledge then your aquarium fish get them. The JD also shouldn't be eating live they need a different diet then that. Plus you just stated that you buy feeders which are going to have diseases from being stressed during transport.

I see. Makes sense. My JD has never eating live foods. I've only had one and feed him blood worms, mysis shrimp and New Life Spectrum Thera+a regular formula. He's never shy always is out and about. My peacock bass eats a mix of live and frozen foods as well.
 

Yuki Rihwa

Redtail Catfish
MFK Member
Jan 22, 2015
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What's the issue with feeders? Disease??
Yes, It's always changes your fish will get disease from live feeders.
It's cool that you can catch baby bluegill and use those as feeders but those might carry a wild parasite and might wipe out your tank, it's just matter of time before it hit you. You should quarantine any live feeders for at least 4 weeks before feed them to your predators. You might also heard other said they feed live feeder for years without problems but it's their changes not your, It's all up to you though!
 
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Fish_tank_dude_96

Black Skirt Tetra
MFK Member
Feb 15, 2017
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Yes, It's always changes your fish will get disease from live feeders.
It's cool that you can catch baby bluegill and use those as feeders but those might carry a wild parasite and might wipe out your tank, it's just matter of time before it hit you. You should quarantine any live feeders for at least 4 weeks before feed them to your predators. You might also heard other said they feed live feeder for years without problems but it's their changes not your, It's all up to you though!

Thank you for these tips! I never knew I should quarantine my feeders. Like you stated it's only a matter of time and I personally don't wanna wait for that! What would my clown knife eat for the time being while I find him a home? He's only eating live fish since I've had him and that was 2-1/2 years ago. Also. My LFS will sell whatever they can to anyone.( can't blame em) Saying yes to any questions you ask them....
 
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Yuki Rihwa

Redtail Catfish
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Jan 22, 2015
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Thank you for these tips! I never knew I should quarantine my feeders. Like you stated it's only a matter of time and I personally don't wanna wait for that! What would my clown knife eat for the time being while I find him a home? He's only eating live fish since I've had him and that was 2-1/2 years ago. Also. My LFS will sell whatever they can to anyone.( can't blame em) Saying yes to any questions you ask them....
If you can start train your fish to eat market prawn then it would be better, but if you're refer to to stick with live feeders then nothing wrong with it (there is no right or wrong using live feeder as stable diet) but you will need to do some extra work if you care for your live stock. You will need 2 small tank (5 or 10 gallons) buy feeders or fish up bluegill and put them in 1 tank have salt, methane blue to treat ick a very common disease, and you might also treat your live feeder for internal parasite (hex/hith), then buff up and gut load your feeders with high quality pellets before give it to your predators so your predator will get enough nutrition and better health for long life. After quarantine the batch of feeders move those to second tank ready to use, and get new batch of feeder and repeat the process. It's a lot of extra works to do and that's why most of us avoid to use live feeder as a stable diet for our predators.
 

GamerChick5567

Dovii
MFK Member
Nov 1, 2016
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Tustin, CA
If you can start train your fish to eat market prawn then it would be better, but if you're refer to to stick with live feeders then nothing wrong with it (there is no right or wrong using live feeder as stable diet) but you will need to do some extra work if you care for your live stock. You will need 2 small tank (5 or 10 gallons) buy feeders or fish up bluegill and put them in 1 tank have salt, methane blue to treat ick a very common disease, and you might also treat your live feeder for internal parasite (hex/hith), then buff up and gut load your feeders with high quality pellets before give it to your predators so your predator will get enough nutrition and better health for long life. After quarantine the batch of feeders move those to second tank ready to use, and get new batch of feeder and repeat the process. It's a lot of extra works to do and that's why most of us avoid to use live feeder as a stable diet for our predators.
Instead of buying and quarantining them each time you could get some good looking adult fish and just start breeding your own babies in a separate, well maintained barebones tank or even a big plastic container. Livebearers and convicts are a good choice. I've got baby guppies that will be ready soon in my 20 long and a convict pair by themselves in my new 29 with about 100-200 wigglers that will be delicious for my cichlids in about a month or 2. Just feed them a good diet like stated above and they will grow fast and healthy. Fish like white cloud mountain minnows and danios breed fairly fast too iirc. Avoid goldfish even though they are easy to keep/breed, thiaminase is bad. For premade stuff, frozen tilapia or swai is pretty cheap usually, just watch out and make sure there's no additives which there sometimes is. You should keep using bloodworms too, basically any fish should like those haha.

As an added plus your jack dempsey might be a bit calmer if you add some livebearers, they live together in the wild. You can see if you can order wild type huge sailfin mollies or swordtails, some can get to like 6-7". Smaller ones will probably be noms though. :D
 

Deadliestviper7

The Necromancer
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Aug 6, 2016
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Well I can. Mine grew to a foot long in my 55 before I gave up and let him go in my cousin's lake. According to wikipedia, you can expect them to grow to 1.5 ft and weigh 8lbs, but they can get much larger
In the ponds I managed most of the channel catfish grew from 3 to 6 inches to 26 to about 36 inches a year later
 

Deadliestviper7

The Necromancer
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Aug 6, 2016
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I have live plants now and I am for sure considering re homing my fish. I love discus and how they look but would rather other fish besides just them. I wanna stay away from preditor fish because I've had them before ( gars , pikes , barracudas etc ) the amount of feeders I was buying started diggin a whole in my pocket ( I also own 3 turtles ) if they are a smaller preditor fish or medium id go down that route because I wouldn't need to buy an excessive amount of feeders.
What kinds of turtles?
 
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