Jack Dempsey and live food

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
R

registered

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
May 13, 2010
68
0
0
Florida
Hey there, I had a mated pair of jack dempseys (they spawned several times during the last year) but sadly the female disappeared... male is around 6 inches and she was around 5... I was on vacation for a month and when I came back she was gone, I assumed he ate her =( weird cuz they were together all the time since I got em as babies..

Today I decided to add 20 small fish (baby goldfish, tetras, around 1 inch each) to the tank (90 gal) to give the male a little fun because it looked boring and empty, but he started eating all of em lol

it's been like two hours since I put them in and he's already swallowed 3... he looks really bloated and turned into a dark color (almost black with blue speckles)

Is that normal? I mean the purpose of these small fish was for him to "hunt em".. just not all of em at once haha.. should i remove em? or it's fine

and I also wanna know if live food is a good choice? do they grow faster?:grinno:
 
3 fish out of 20 in 2 hours is all at once?

First off, The female went somewhere. Probably jumped out of the tank and a cat got her or something. Dont think she was eaten.

I'm assuming you didnt quarentine the feeders before feeding them to the dempsey so you may have just loaded him with whatever diseases and parasites the feeders carried.
Live foods are a terrible choice. Nothing will make your fish grow like suppying him the vitamins he would eat in the wild. High quality pellets do exactly that. A great live food for an occasional treat are live fishing worms or crickets.
 
Yeah I'm pretty sure that your 6" JD didn't eat your 5" JD. Even if the male killed it and tried to eat it, you would have found the remains of the body. Do you have other fish in the tank besides the tetras and goldfish? Check any ornaments or crevices in the tank for your missing fish. I have had fish lodge themselves in really weird places, disappear for a few days and then suddenly appear again. Check the sump and behind the tank too. You would be surprised where fish can find themselves.
 
I agree with the other posters. She probably just jumped out and flopped out of site or was carried off.

It is possible she is hidden behind some decorations as long as you have a lot of them.

It is unlikely the other JD would eat her whole based on the relative size.
 
Woah... you guys were right o_o... I would have never thought of that, because my tank is completely covered except for 2 rectangular openings in the back, right where you put the overflow box.

I just searched under the tank stand and found her dead.. thats really sad, I have no idea how she could have jumped through such a small opening, they rarely even go close to the surface unless they're feeding.
 
FishingOut;4623431; said:
3 fish out of 20 in 2 hours is all at once?

First off, The female went somewhere. Probably jumped out of the tank and a cat got her or something. Dont think she was eaten.

I'm assuming you didnt quarentine the feeders before feeding them to the dempsey so you may have just loaded him with whatever diseases and parasites the feeders carried.
Live foods are a terrible choice. Nothing will make your fish grow like suppying him the vitamins he would eat in the wild. High quality pellets do exactly that. A great live food for an occasional treat are live fishing worms or crickets.
Click to expand...

well 3 out of 20 and he doesn't seem to want to stop anytime soon... normally I feed him 1 cube of frozen beefheart every other day, sometimes I wait 3-4 days to avoid overfeeding. These "small" fish are 1-2 inches long so I just get scared to see him swallowing them whole like it's nothing... you can even see their tails hanging outta his mouth for a few minutes lol

the "feeders" aren't the ones that u get a bunch for 10 cents each... I'd never use those since there's always several dead fish and nasty water in their tanks at the pet shop, they don't even have gravel. I bought the "pet" goldfish/neon tetras (2.29 each) from a pretty healthy lookin tank, hopefully they weren't sick. I've never received a sick fish from that particular store.
 
Sorry about your JD, but it's what I suspected. Fish have a knack of playing Houdini some times. My wife once made me search upstairs and downstairs for a missing eel. She refused to sleep or let me sleep until I found the thing. After flipping over the chairs and beds to prove to her that it wasn't lurking on the floor, I found it hiding in a small hole in a fake log in the tank. I slept like a baby that night.
 
I dont blame her. More humane to dry up on the floor than suffer from the internal organ damage from the garbage diet shes was on. Beefheart and unquarentined live feeders.

Instead of spending $50 on feeders, Spend $7 on a bag of high quality pellets and your fish will be at much happier and stop trying to commit suicide.

Feed pellets and other foods designed for fish to eat twice a day, Not mammalian meat twice a week, Im sure the liver and kidneys are already hurting from the lack of vegatables and high levels of protein they are incapable of digesting.
 
Nothing wrong with beefheart. Ive used it for many many years and have never had any health issues associated with it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
MonsterFishKeepers.com
Top Bottom