breed your own feeders?

[ctateo]

I have always liked to give my big ciclids some feeders as a treat, plus it's interesting to see how your fish stalks its prey. I finally gave up on feeders, even those from the better LFS near me, as I have lost some gorgeous big fish due to parasites and disease in the past.

My question do most of you breed your own, or do you keep a quarantine tank and medicate for a week or two before using the feeders?

If you breed your own, what do you breed? I had read some posts years ago where a guy kept multiple breeding tanks for convicts to use as feeders.

I really don't have much room for additional tanks, so i am likely to use a 20 gallon and medicate, but if the breeding aspect is interesting, maybe i give that a shot.

 

[Juxtaroberto]

You'd need to quarantine for about a month to a month and a half in order to really be sure the feeders are disease free. Also, even you do set up a quarantine for feeders, you can't just medicate randomly, a) because there are a myriad of diseases a fish could carry and you can't just make your own medicine cocktail to cure the fish of absolutely all possible ailments, b) constant contact with medicine could produce medicine resistant illnesses in your tank that would then hitchhike on the feeders to your fish, and c) you don't know what the effects would be on your fish if you always feed fish that have been swimming in medicine unnecessarily. This is perhaps the point of least concern, but would still make me uneasy.

So you'd have to keep the feeders in quarantine and watch them, for 4 to 6 weeks, and then if they show signs of disease, medicate them. If you're willing to go through that, then fine.

 

[dogofwar]

I culture red wiggler worms. I use a large rubbermaid bin and feed veggie scraps from the kitchen.

This kind of a culture will be far cheaper, more productive and easier than any kind of fish-based approach (livebearers, convicts, etc)

Matt