What "strange" things do you feed to your fish?

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Belly up

Piranha
MFK Member
Sep 19, 2008
637
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Wolverine, MI
I have been keeping cichlids for many years. As a kid (eight or nine years old) I fed my first Oscar many different insects from grasshoppers to earth worms and slugs. When I started driving later, I went to feeder goldfish, shrimp, beef heart, bait minnows and other high protein items. I got a kick out of watching my fish figure out that thing on top of the water was actually food. Some fish always seem a little inept at taking bugs from the surface (Jack Dempseys, I`m lookin at you), others are deadly right from the get go (Jags). Now days I still like to feed some of my fish oddball stuff other than food sticks. I use mostly grasshoppers and worms. I stay away from aquatic stuff because I do not want to introduce anything funky.

So, I was wondering if anyone else feeds their fish natural live foods? What you use and do your fish seem to benefit from it?

For the record my beani get nothing besides food sticks. Touchy species should not be fed wild foods. My La Cieba freddies and Jags just love this stuff.
 
my grammodes loved to nail flys that i'd catch for him. Everything cichlid seems to go nuts for live night crawlers. i do realise these aren't that strange though!
 
I used to feed my larger fish small crayfish. They were about 1.5" long. Now I would not do that because of parasites. Tony, what kind of mess do mice make in the water? Unusual to be sure though.
 
Years ago I lived in a rental apartment in Florida that was infested with roaches. In my free time, I enjoyed catching them to treat my JD. They were the small German roaches, perfect mouth size for JD. I was so good at catching the roaches with a forecept as a bird with a 90% success rate, The JD were crazy about the roaches and would jump up the water for the treat. Insects are natural live food for many cichlids. They wouldn't get as excited if I just fed them pellets. I learned that JD must have good eye sight as they would be excited as soon as I approached the tank with a roach 20 ft away.
 
you can feed thawed peas. Pinch them out of their skin into the water. This is especially good food for fish with blue tones. Really enhances color. This is more of something you would do for a hap tho.. And back in the day, I used to feed "potatoe bugs" Idk what people call them outside of northeast ohio.. but my fish seemed to love them, and did better than they ever did on hikari.. lmao. Be careful... parasites..
 
Belly up said:
I have been keeping cichlids for many years. As a kid (eight or nine years old) I fed my first Oscar many different insects from grasshoppers to earth worms and slugs. When I started driving later, I went to feeder goldfish, shrimp, beef heart, bait minnows and other high protein items. I got a kick out of watching my fish figure out that thing on top of the water was actually food. Some fish always seem a little inept at taking bugs from the surface (Jack Dempseys, I`m lookin at you), others are deadly right from the get go (Jags). Now days I still like to feed some of my fish oddball stuff other than food sticks. I use mostly grasshoppers and worms. I stay away from aquatic stuff because I do not want to introduce anything funky.

So, I was wondering if anyone else feeds their fish natural live foods? What you use and do your fish seem to benefit from it?

For the record my beani get nothing besides food sticks. Touchy species should not be fed wild foods. My La Cieba freddies and Jags just love this stuff.
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yeah, i feed my oscar earthworms now and nothing else. feed it shrimps and nightcrawlers once in a time. mine does not eat pellets or veggies. it seems to be okay with tht and its colors really show, but im still concern of any parasite tht might harm it. so far so good. hahah
 
I nomally stick to mussels and shrimp etc but the other day I put a new piece of driftwood into the tank. I'd let it sit in a bucket of water to soak for a while then it sat in the garden maybe a day before it went in.

Fish had a field day picking the bugs off it as they crawled out of their hidey holes!

Sent from my HTC One X
 
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