Yesterday i was walking around a pond near my house and saw hundreds of tadpoles only hafe a cm big. they were easy to catch with a open hand in the water. i was wondering if i could catch a bunch of them and feed them to some of my fish. Would it be safe?
wild tadpoles as food
- Thread starter Adam12345
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I'm sure it would, unsure about parasites but i used to do it, fed them to my koi ages ago! full of fat! lol
Hello; I tried this very thing some time back in the late 1960's. It did not work out very well. Some of my fish ate the tadpoles but then puked them out. I did not try it again.
Could be that the particular tadpoles I found had some sort of toxin or bad taste. I later learned that this is a common defense of amphibians. Think of poison arrow frogs or cane toads. There is a water newt in the southeast U.S. that is plentifull in some lakes and ponds. I do not think anything eats them.
The other notion about parasites is a valid one. Live food collected in the wild has the potential for carrying disease and/or parasites.
Could be that the particular tadpoles I found had some sort of toxin or bad taste. I later learned that this is a common defense of amphibians. Think of poison arrow frogs or cane toads. There is a water newt in the southeast U.S. that is plentifull in some lakes and ponds. I do not think anything eats them.
The other notion about parasites is a valid one. Live food collected in the wild has the potential for carrying disease and/or parasites.
Bad idea. They will almost definitely have parasites, and they are VERY fatty.
They aren't toxic in any way if they are just normal frog or toad tadpoles, but i still wouldn't do it.
They aren't toxic in any way if they are just normal frog or toad tadpoles, but i still wouldn't do it.
muffywrx;5154857; said:
The difference is the fact that the tadpoles can harbor diseases and parasites that a feeder from a LFS could never have. They come from the wild, and most likely have diseases that a tropical fish has absolutely no resistance to. The possibility of infection from a wild food source has to be much higher than that of farm raised feeders. You could destroy an entire tank of fish without even knowing what happened, because the amount of potential diseases is much higher and it would be much harder to diagnose a single one to treat. You might as well take a bucket full of disgusting brown pond water and dump it in your tank. The amount of bad things that you are introducing would be about equal.
Feeding wild tadpoles that you don't even know the species of is FAR more risky than dumping in a whole bag of feeder goldfish from a LFS.
Like I said, I wouldn't do it. But if you want to, nobody can stop you.