How do you know if LFS has realiable feeders?

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skillzdatkillz

skillzdatkillz

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Mar 25, 2006
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I was wondering how you know if your lfs has diease free feeders? Is it just by experience or can you tell by the appearence? I never buy feeders from petsmart/petco because sometimes half the tank is dead or near death, but my lfs feeder tanks are accually pretty lively and they rarely have dead fish in them. Could I buy some or should I just not risk it?
 
Never buy feeders from a tank of obviously sick tank.Always quarantine feeders I don't care how good they look they all need help as in proper gutloading-Anne
 
Yup Quarentine all new additions even those destined for a few seconds in the tank....a ten cent fish can cause hell in a large system when it comes to the cost of medicating the tank and the potential loss of fish.

Normally i only use live feeder fish i have no other choice and i dont do it to watch them get eaten so i just up the bait shop, toss em in the stock tank outside, the turtles get what dies right out and those that live get to dodge the net all summer before being fed to what ever is being a pain in my butt.

Also from the retailer side of things, wholesales sometimes use several sources for feeders and it can literally vary in quality between boxes, let alone week to week. Always inspect carefully.

Jason
 
Unless the lfs breeds their own feeders & you know them well enough to be sure.

Otherwise quarentine them, even medicate them. then gut-load them before feeding time.

NEVER ever put the feeders water :barf: (or any water brought from the lfs) into your tank.
 
Find out where they get them, the best place I ever found got theirs from a breeder of show quality goldfish, they were the surplus and the culls (bent spine, short fin, etc) as well as excess commons. even so they ussually got quarantined as they came from outside ponds.
 
Rather than buy feeders, I go to local creeks and catch fathead minnows. You can catch what you need and sort through them to find the sizes you want, they are healthy, and they are free!
 
How do you know they are healthy? The creek nearby my house it really polluted and is literally nothing but huge globs of alge. I dont think I want to feed anything to my fish from it.
 
Ive only bought feeders from LFSs where I saw that the tank is as clean as all the other tanks, an no dead or sick feeders were in/swimming around in the tank. If your really into using feeders, you can breed your own using most any livebearing fish (guppies, mollies, swordtails, even convicts).

Im thinking about breeding Sailfin Mollies for feeders (they get fairly big compared to other mollies).
 
Buy Feeders from various locations, and QT them all the same..

Keep a chart and figure out which feeders died the most, etc.. and after a few weeks of close studies you can usually figure out who has the best supplier and conditions their feeders the best.

Some chain stores do have quality feeders, but it has more to do with system maintenance and how they are stocked. Alot of people fail to realize that a LARGE majority of the feeder comet goldfish in the country come from Pool Fisheries, in Arkansas.. So it might not be the quality of the stock they are getting, but rather how they care for them.
 
If i have to , i quarantine them for 3-4 days .. if more than a third dies within that time
period or if i see anything out of the ordinary develops , then i just get rid of them.

But in reality, i dont feed my ray tank feeder fish. The smaller tanks i do get it once a month or so . Its too risky .
 
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