hey guys. i have wanted bass for a long time but havent had the tank big enough for them.. i just got my 320gallon built and established and running good. now i would like the run down on them. my buddy has had plenty before and kinda gave me some advice but i would also like to hear others opions. i have heard both YES and NO about if you need to filter threw your feeders from the local petstore first (opinions please). i just got one mono yesterday about 2 1/2 to 3 inch and will get 2 orinos as soon as i can. how fast will they grow in a 8foot 320? with the temp at 84 with great filtration (3000gph with tonz of bio filtration) and good food. also i want to mainly feed them pellets and krill but occasionaly throw in some feeders for fun and i have heard they need to sometimes have live food so they dont get bored. so i mainly need to clear up if i need to weed out any diseases in the feeders. i have also seen that some ppl cut the fins off the feeders do i need to do this on all fish or just the thick spined dorsal? any help and opinions would be great thanks
i need a little general info on pbass
- Thread starter wheatgerm
- Start date
As far as feeders treat before you feed them to your bass for sure.Real sensitive to disease at a small size.If you feed them well you can expect close to or all of an inch a month..As far as de finning that would be on larger heavy finned feeders /fishes.
thanks thats what i kinda thought but wasnt sure. i know UV filter is key but i have also heard that there is a food that will cycle threw the feeders and you wont need a UV, has anyone else heard of this? i really dont want to spend much setting up a tank just for feeders lol
I have not heard of that kind of food and would be definatly leary of that claim..wheatgerm;4385824; said:
Well, I can share what I was taught, and it's worked well in the past. My first experience growing out cichla was years ago when I was working at a public aquarium. We grew out cichla in a 300 gal. fiberglass tank located behind the scenes in the filter room. We fed young "fingerlings" live food exclusively until they reached a size of around 6". No carp fishes, meaning no goldfish, rosies, etc. We used mainly guppies, platies, mollies, or fish from various spawning cichlids, mainly Africans when we had them. We also used live blackworms. The fish grow very fast when fed live foods, which is totally natural for them, and I attribute to strong and fast growth. When they started eating cut fish, their food was injected with liquid vitamins from a vet syringe before feeding, as nutrients rapidly deteriorate in dead food. The PH was kept in the low to mid sixes, hardness soft to med., and temp. was kept at mid 80's to low 90s F to prevent disease. Water changes were 50% twice weekly. Since all the fish we received at that time were wild, once the fish had settled in from shipment, they were given a treatment of Prazi to control gill flukes, which nearly all wild fish from SA have to a certain extent, followed with a Levamisole treatment for internal parasites at the 2 month mark. Hope this helps.
wow that's alot of info and yes it does help. how fast was your growth rate doing all that im sure it was more than usual...
so is a uv filter the only way to treat the feeders then? also what size are they when they start showing their true colors?
so is a uv filter the only way to treat the feeders then? also what size are they when they start showing their true colors?
Finally got some huh? The food you are thinking about is Thera-a by New Life Spectrum. It has a really high load of garlic and will kill any internal parasites after feeding it to your feeders exclusively for a week or two prior to feeding the feeders. Cypriniformes like goldfish, rosies, and carp carry thiaminase which is an enzyme that destroys thiamin(vitamin B). You can combat it by feeding a well rounded diet. At the size you have now I would feed frozen bloodworms, mysis, tubifex, and live or dehydrated black worms. Once you get them to 4-5" convert them over to diced tilapia, shrimp, catfish, and any fish fillets that you seem to like. Sense you are right next to Willard Bay I would go out there with a cast net and collect sunfish and throw them in the freezer before feeding. After they hit 10" you should start seeing the colors develop. At that size I would start adding whole smelt to their diet. I would turn your temp up to 86 or higher while they are under 6". As far as the growth rate of your new fish you should be seeing about 1" a month out of it. The C. orinocensis will be a little slower.
UV only treats free floating organisms in the water column, not in fish, and then only at higher doses than is really practical for the hobbyist. UV's primarily function is to destroy free floating algae in the water. Piscivores have pretty strong immune systems by nature. Young cichla's biggest threat really, is ich, which can develop if they are kept at cool temps. In the wild, the first fish to fall prey are usually the sick and injured fish. I'm sure it's possible, but probably unlikely that a cichla would fall ill because of eating a sick fish. They eat any fish they can catch in the wild, not just the healthy ones. The acids in the gut break down food rapidly. To be safe, you can treat feeder fish for parasites ahead of time if you wish, or like was suggested, freeze them if your fish will eat dead.