Bichir in guppy colony?

[RLHam3]

Hey everybody. So this summer i'm moving out of my college dorms (for good hopefully) and am planning on setting up a few tanks. I've just started what will hopefully turn into a guppy colony in a 10 gal with a little 1" bristle-nose pleco. (river pebble subsrate, hang on penguin filter rated for 30 gal, duckweed, floating anacharis, javamoss and hornwort)

I am planning on raising a senegalus (and aforementioned the bristle-nose) in a 55 over the summer. But if i wanted to get the bichir earlier and put it into this guppy tank would that be an option? (after the population begins to increase a little)
I keep up with water changes enough to not really have to worry about adding a 3 or so inch bichir. I'd be feeding him sinking pellets as a staple, but i feel like while he's in the guppy tank, he'd prefer to eat the live guppies. I'm worried that if the bichir becomes used to eating live guppy fry, he might not do too well When i switch him to a different tank without the guppies. Does anybody have any experience with this?

I'm also worried that I'm going to completely underestimate the size of the bichir's mouth and wake up the morning after i put him in and be missing all of the fish... would a baby senegalus (about the size of the small ones at petsmart) be able to eat a full grown male guppy? female?

 

[GhostShrimpMan]

I'd say just wait if you don't want to lose any fish. I'm pretty sure he could eat them if he wanted to. At the same time though they are not too good at catching live fish and probably never have.

So your call.

 

[msjinkzd]

your bichir would certainly love the live food

 

[eloyloy]

my 3in bichir tried to eat my 3in albino pleco.. thats when i knew it was time for live food.. i feed mine plattys tho

 

[mzhantsche]

Id wait. Senegal bichirs are so easy to come by. He will certianly eat all your guppys. Maybe not now but in a month he will devistate the tank. Bichirs are good enough hunters. My two will eat 100 guppys in 3 days. They are only 6" long.

 

[lix.ma14]

no way! never feed ur bichirs feeder fish! my goal is to tell every fish keeper that! sure, you can be fun to watch a predatory fish snapping on a poor guppy, but guppies have very poor nutrition values plus they can introduce killer paracites to ur precious bichir. just yesterday, my 4 inch bichir died from paracites in the stomach. Once there are paracites worm in a fish's stomach, it's so hard to remove them, not mentioning how much it hurts to see a fish suffering right in front of ur eyes! read my threads!

 

[Box]

nice.

 

[JamesF]

If your feeders are properly quarantined there is little worry of parasites or other diseases. Just stay away from "feeder fish" as sold by pet stores. They are mass produced in rather poor conditions and usually carry disease. A healthy breeding population of fancy guppies would make great feeders, even if you don't want them to be.

 

[blksubykid]

No, my friend did that once....his bichir died.

 

[GarNiac]

live foods are OK as long as you quarantine them first, as many breeder are still using them for feeding. There are lots of medications out there which are used to threat parasites/bacteria during quarantine. However, once your bichirs are used to live food, then it will be hard to feed them with non live food.
Otherwise, just stick with non live food, which are cheaper and you can prepare it by your self.