Goldfish are Nutritious

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From personal experience, in the disease categorey, this is 99% on the fish keeper. Sure your fish can get diseases no matter what you do to keep the feeders healthy... It happens. About all of the videos on YouTube of people feeding live feeder fish show them going straight from the plastic, oxygenated bags from the LFS, to the fish tank. IMO this is why there are so many doubts on feeding these goldfish, because people like that have their fish killed and wonder why, blaming it on the risky feeding of live fish when they are the ones that neglected to quarantine the feeders to reduce the risk.
 
Screamin - Solomon is in complete agreement, it appears that you have misread that post, Solomon was quoting another poster in the initial portion.

Here's what Solomon (E_americanus) said in the first paragraph of his comment.

i think this has been said many times in this thread, but you CAN feed just one type of pellet and the fish will be very healthy and not require another type of food...provided it is the RIGHT type of pellet. this is true even with gars, and many of the alligator and tropical gar hatcheries feed only pellets and trust me when i say their fish are just fine and of high-quality stock.



Go back to that thread & start on page 5, post #43, first post by Solomon (E_americanus) in that discussion, where he also stated:

- a high-quality pellet CAN serve as the singular food item for a gar that will take it, and it will be extremely healthy. look at the ingredients and dig a bit deeper into the pdf that was posted earlier and also do some further research. if the pellet has the necessary vitamins and minerals, etc etc then your fish can and will do just fine on the right pellet.

And I wholeheartedly agree with pejelajarto with regards to NOT being able to take the hunt out of a piscivore, even after years of feeding pellet foods, even if that piscivore has never seen or eaten anything live in its life. I have seen the result of that first hand, thousands of years of being hard wired to hunt & kill prey is not something that dissappears when live prey is withheld.
I had a piscivore that I had owned for years, this fish had eaten pellets it's entire life - one day I decided to add a juvenile fish into this tank, thinking (stupidly) that this juvie was too large to consume by any of the older/larger fish. The piscivore took one look at this juvie fish, swam across the tank in a blink of an eye, and inhaled him head first.
 
sheajarod - while what you say is true, the answer is not as simplistic as just following a proper QT protocol if one is using farmed feeders. .

From the Gar discussion, posted by Pejelajarto;

Also the the biggest issue with Farmed feeders is the fact they are packed with copper medications and other chemical treatments / antibiotics rather than the parasite issue. They are also generally poorly fed themselves and provide little of the nutrition a wild fish would obtain. These store bought feeders are nothing but antibiotic laced twinkies compared to a well formulated pellet feed. Farm raised Shrimp, fish and other items while not as heavily dosed due to Food laws that restrict such things still are not Whole foods when fed and lack full nutritional quality.

Disease free does not necessarily equate to healthy.
 
Hey R.D.

I have less than no question that a single quality pellet is all that is required. My gar will have absolutely nothing that could be misconstrued as "pelletized" food once they hit the pond. I am uncertain on the de-programming part.

Again, this was the quote from Solomon:

some of these hatcheries switch to live for some of their fish, but this is usually only in prepping them for release into the wild to re-stock depleted populations, obviously a gar in this case would have to learn how to catch food (in home aquaria this is NOT a necessity, no matter how much we may think so).

I was totally unable to find anything like a gar "hatchery" to supply the gar as stated above, but evidently Solomon is aware of their existance. As both Solomon and pejelajarto agreed that the fish that the gars eat in nature are probably more nutricious than Rosey Red Minnows and Goldfish. I have to also agree 100%, but I have had some minor issues already with feeding these (feeders) that are again NOT going to be an option in the farm pond.

In an extremely short period of time, I notcied that I was seemingly deprogramming the gar from their natural prey. I generally threw Green Sunfish fry into the gars as their staple diet (They are the population of the farm pond I own). Upon introducing the feeder comets, I created a challenge. No question that the gar strongly prefer to "hit" the "less healthy" goldfish with the nice soft fins rather that take on the extremely sharp spined baby Greenies. I mean to the point that the Greenies would not be touched until the Goldies were gone!

My Gars have even less of a chance of me buying them a whole bunch of Feeder comets down in the farm pond, than to walk all the way down there everyday with pellet in hand.

If my gar fail to feast on Green Sunfish, they will fail miserably in my pond.

If there is some kind of "Gar" hatchery as Solomon has stated above, and they feed live in order for successful re-introduction in outdoor stocking, it gives me a major concern.

Rest assured. Every fish that I keep in Aquarium is on a NLS pellet staple diet, and I see no reason at all to change that, as I have had nothing short of fantastic results since switching to NLS.
 
Screamin ........ both Solomon & Peje work with gars on a commercial aquaculture basis, so it would best to PM one of them as to what source of live food they use when converting from pellets back to live food, before reintroduction to the wild. I believe that Peje works with a gar hatchery, and Solomon was going for his masters degree the last time we spoke.
 
Why not post pics of your or my fish the proof is there a pic is worth a thousand words so to speak Right as far as being respected in the cichla circles i am:naughty:I was not trying to say feed live all the time but i personaly believe it should be a part of diet for sure ....As far as dry feed personally hikari all the way ive tried others and the quality just is not there IMO and Just mine .....When you keep big fish even tho you want to give the best dry's available you have to look for good and great fillers such as cut bait tilapia shrimp and others i could empty a one pound bag of Massivore daily into just one fish witch is not going to happen ...There is no reason to flame this guy even if he is a Koi breeder and telling people you can't feed live or your fish will wither away is not right either just throwen my opinion and guess what i can;):ROFL:Oh and last time i checked lions don't always come from Zoo's;)
 
I can't even bring myself to make the effort to read through your post thoroughly. Spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure are your friend. ;)

If you want to lurk through my threads you can find pictures of my stock. The black belt in my avatar is fed 100% NLS since the day I got him. Here is a before and after (I was told he was fed GOLDFISH as part of his diet before I got him).

Before with a varied diet:
5ab23136.jpg


6 months of exclusive NLS:
cdd04679.jpg
 
Original Poster I agree with you 100% and yes I have proof FEEDERS are the nutrition of winners. This is CREAM certified. If you need proof go look around the Cichla form it's CREAM or die and all the REAL CREAM members feed live. So there is your proof.
 
I can't even bring myself to make the effort to read through your post thoroughly. Spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure are your friend. ;)

If you want to lurk through my threads you can find pictures of my stock. The black belt in my avatar is fed 100% NLS since the day I got him. Here is a before and after (I was told he was fed GOLDFISH as part of his diet before I got him).

Before with a varied diet:
5ab23136.jpg






6 months of exclusive NLS:
cdd04679.jpg

BEFORE YOU OWNED HIM HE ATE LIVE BEFORE HE CAME TO YOU SO WHAT IS YOUR POINT MR. GRAMMER CICHLID KING. TALK TO me about a cichlid you have raised exclusivly on pellets and you will still be experincing a loss because it is not a well rounded diet. I have raised fish on just pellets and loss them as well so......Pellets are only better because you say so?
 
I can't even bring myself to make the effort to read through your post thoroughly. Spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure are your friend. ;)

If you want to lurk through my threads you can find pictures of my stock. The black belt in my avatar is fed 100% NLS since the day I got him. Here is a before and after (I was told he was fed GOLDFISH as part of his diet before I got him).

Before with a varied diet:
5ab23136.jpg


6 months of exclusive NLS:
cdd04679.jpg
That fish is clearly in bad shape from poor water quality a novice can see it at a glance the cloudy eye is tell tale for sure not from feeders ....I did not know this was your thread by the way ????? And if you are offended by my spelling to bad i don't feel like hitting spell check..Your picture is even more proof in my mind that water is what we truly keep not the fish:naughty:
 
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