What type of fish to feed as a staple?

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Candiru
MFK Member
Apr 12, 2005
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Hillsboro, OR
For a staple diet, I like to feed at least 3 different types of meat. Day to day, I've been feeding a lot of beefheart (mammal, protein and calorie dense), shrimp (invertebrate, full of essential nutrients and fish love it), but haven't found a good fish.

Smelt is only available as ~6" fish. Too big to feed whole and too small to fillet. My rays (including a 3" hystrix) are too small to eat silversides. I've tried repeatedly to feed cut up "pacific sol" fillets, but they aren't crazy about it at all.

What are your suggestions? What type of fish should I try? Keep in mind that I have to be able to chop it into very small pieces.
 
I would try rosies. The goldfish are to fatty but the rosies are good for them.
 
kissme_419 said:
I would try rosies. The goldfish are to fatty but the rosies are good for them.
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Maybe once in awhile, but not as a staple. It has to be something I can buy 2+ lbs. of at the grocery store.
 
I use silver sides and lake smelt a lot. If they are too big for the rays to eat, chop them up a little bit. Don't mess with trying to fillet them. I'll take a pic of my food prepped and laid out before I do my afternoon feeding today so you can see what it looks like for my adults and my pups.
 
rvrrays said:
Smelt and a big pair of kitchen shears. I feed chopped smelt to my newborn rays (within a week).

Colin
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Colin,
Thanks for the advice. When chopping it into pieces that small, the smelt doesn't turn into a big mess of fish guts and what not?
 
gman said:
Try feeding the ray black worms until it puts on some size, or even chopped earthworms.
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I already feed both of those, but not as a staple. I want to feed some type of fish for the sake of variety.
 
Unfortunately, my smelt come with the head removed and gutted.

There is no mess. However, I would love to find them completely intact.

Even if they do have the guts, they are frozen and you most likely have some other fish that will clean up the mess.

Colin
 
when i was younger we caught smelt while ice fishing by the hundreds and when we cleaned for freezing we just took a fillet knife and split open the belly then just use your finger to slide the guts out. it worked pretty good too.
it was a lot faster than trying to fillet those little things. it would also make it easier to cut up with the shears.

just an idea.

later
 
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