Mosquito fish as feeders

[SeaHorseRanch]

Anyone raise mosquito fish as feeders? I have a quarter acre pond and it has thousands of mosquito fish. I would like to start a colony in a tank. What safety precautions should I take before I use them as feeders for my fish? Should I medicate them with PraziPro for a month before feeding? Any advice would be appreciated!

 

[Midwater]

I treat feeders with Levamisole for twenty four hours.

Be careful, as many/most fish contain high levels of thiaminase. The only fish I am confident with low levels is tilapia.

With live feeding, you really need some variation.

 

[Hybridfish7]

I treat feeders with Levamisole for twenty four hours.

Be careful, as many/most fish contain high levels of thiaminase. The only fish I am confident with low levels is tilapia.

With live feeding, you really need some variation.

By this logic all predatory fish in the wild are having thiaminase overdoses. Mosquitofish and other livebearers are recommended as feeders because they don't contain high levels of thiaminase.

Anyone raise mosquito fish as feeders? I have a quarter acre pond and it has thousands of mosquito fish. I would like to start a colony in a tank. What safety precautions should I take before I use them as feeders for my fish? Should I medicate them with PraziPro for a month before feeding? Any advice would be appreciated!

In my opinion as long as you aren't seeing any actual infections on the fish they're fine. I'm no expert, but I feel like pumping your feeders full of drugs is probably not a good idea. I feel like at that point something's going to build up in the fish you're feeding them to, and it's not going to be thiamine.

When I collect mosquitofish for feeders I basically just purge them in the sink with tap water and make sure as little of the lake water is coming with them. Healthy ecosystems have microorganisms that eat parasites and such. Diseases only really pop up in sterile/immature/unstable environments. I'm always cautious, but I've never had issues with just dumping mosquitofish into my tanks.

That said you're better off just collecting them out of the pond. Mosquitofish in tanks (or smaller garden ponds even) have an affinity for eating their fry... and their males for some reason. I've observed this phenomenon in 4 Gambusia species. If they're already consistently breeding out there that's a far better source than any tank colony will be.

 

[Milingu]

By this logic all predatory fish in the wild are having thiaminase overdoses.

Not really. You have to differentiate between predators that have evolved eating thiaminase rich food and those who didn't. The thiaminase problem only occurs because we feed thiaminase rich feeders in too big amounts to predators that are not adapted to it.

 

[duanes]

One of the others factors, may be that many aquarists have the impression that most fish (such as cichlids) are not totally predatory when actually they are omnivores.
And when omnivores are restricted to a diet of "only" fish flesh, it is incomplete, or when fed only a diet of fish filets.
When most predators, swallow prey, they get the head, the organs, bone and scales, guts (and whats inside) providing complete nutrition.
A tilapia filet does not really provide that, alone.

I occasionally feed mosquito fish, but inspect, and QT them, to make such pests such as Lernaea, or their larvae are not imbedded inside (not always easy to see, oreasy to get rid of.

 

[Hybridfish7]

Not really. You have to differentiate between predators that have evolved eating thiaminase rich food and those who didn't. The thiaminase problem only occurs because we feed thiaminase rich feeders in too big amounts to predators that are not adapted to it.

I worded that a bit wrong, my point with that statement being that not all fish we use as feeders have the same thiaminase levels as Cypriniformes, and it's already been discussed on this forum that the fish that evolved to eat Cypriniformes (Asian/North Am. preds) are more used to this. It is also generally known that Poeciliids (or Atheriniformes in general, extending to silversides) contain negligible levels of thiaminase and are subsequetly safe as feeders. Centrarchids as well, if you want to go further down the path of collecting your own feeders. I also accidentally said thiamine instead of thiaminase in there somewhere.

I was going to say as a side observation maybe high thiaminase levels are a shared trait across Otocephalans, since it's also a problem with Clupeiformes (shad anchovies etc) but thiaminase content in catfish does not seem to be a consistent thing, and thiaminase does not bioaccumulate. Back on topic though, if we look at it from the chemical (or whatever) perspective, the problem with thiaminase is that it breaks down vitamin B1 (thiamine) and causes a deficiency in said vitamin. The obvious solution is to just not feed foods that are high in thiaminase, but if you happen to be feeding something that is high in thiaminase to something that isn't used to that, you can also supplement the diet with vitamin B1. I will also note that you have to be careful with frozen silversides as sometimes they don't use actual silversides. I have heard a loose anecdote that feeding insects can offset thiaminase intake since insects (like crickets) contain vitamin B1 but I'm not sure if this would be viable with some larger species of fish.