Feeding wild fish to cichlids??

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badazz07sti

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Sep 7, 2009
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salinas
I'm going to the lake tomorrow and I wanna catch some small fish for my dovii. Is this a bad idea? or maybe quarantine them for a while? Does anybody do this? I've heard of people taking crayfish from local rivers with no problems. Thanks for the input

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You do take the chance of introducing parasites on small fish, that in nature might be a minor irritant, but in the confines of an aquarium can become epidemic.
 
Not a good idea and not worth it a mate of mine did it and the next day snakehead was dead , tank bred captive fish ain't as tuff as wild (even dovii's) there immune systems can't take it , id pay out for some feeders or like Fishman says above breed something that's easy , guppies , mollys , swordtails etc , convicts are also a good one if you like cichlids
 
I'm going to be catching my own feeders quite a bit this spring and summer but I also have a couple 100g plastic tubs to quarantine them in. I'm planning on 30 days of QT before going in the display just in case. Mollies and guppies are a good idea too, but don't go very far with cichla. I can catch shiners from 3-6" and my fish love 'em.
 
Well that solves that! Definitely not worth the risk. Thanks so much for the quick replies I really appreciate it. I have a 10g in the garage that can become my hatchery.

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I agree it's a bad idea - too much risk of introducing parasites and other bad things.

People underestimate the amount of time that it takes to grow a guppy or swordtail fry from birth to, say, 1". It's months. Or longer in a 10g.

Culturing red wiggler worms is 1000x easier and faster. I feed a fishroom of 50+ tanks of cichlids with a single bin...

Matt
 
I agree it's a bad idea - too much risk of introducing parasites and other bad things.

People underestimate the amount of time that it takes to grow a guppy or swordtail fry from birth to, say, 1". It's months. Or longer in a 10g.

Culturing red wiggler worms is 1000x easier and faster. I feed a fishroom of 50+ tanks of cichlids with a single bin...

Matt

I have been looking into doing this alot lately Matt. Do you use the compost bin method I keep seeing or another method? If you have a link or something for your method (if different) that would be awesome. :) I could even trade you a syn. For some of your wigglers so I can get started if your interested :p
 
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