# Live Food?



## Eb0la11 (Feb 29, 2008)

Does anyone breed their own live food? I've thought about this idea for a while and not sure if its really all that feasible but wanted to see what people are doing. *** thought about putting some of my younger batch of my fry in the tank after they are like a month but cant really bring myself to do it with such a nice fish, Id rather do it with something thats not quite as nice/hard to breed.


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## kingpoiuy (Jun 9, 2008)

I've started breeding convicts. It's a very rough estimate since i've just started doing it but it's looking like about 100 per month out of a single pair. They will breed in anything with any water conditions :thumb: pretty much.


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## Eb0la11 (Feb 29, 2008)

So do you think you'll let any of your other fish eat the little babies after you let them grow out a month or two?


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## kingpoiuy (Jun 9, 2008)

Well, I don't really have any Piscivores. The Convicts are good parents and they were with the fry for a month and never ate one. I'm selling them right now but might get an oscar someday and feed them to him. I haven't checked yet to see if oscar like convict fry but I will check first of course.


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## wmayes (Oct 22, 2007)

I'm fairly sure that some of the Mods do and I'm sure to great success.

Just to make sure you know:
*Never* buy feeder fish from an LFS and especially from places like PetCo, Petsmart, or Wal-Mart. They are usually in horrible shape and kept under horrible conditions and as such are likely to carry various infectious diseases or parasites which can make your wet pet seriously ill, which, in the most extreme of cases, can result in a loss of something which (considering the types of fish that eat or can eat other fish) could have cost a very large sum of money. :thumb: :wink:


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## Toby_H (Apr 15, 2005)

I have several spawning pairs and use their offspring as food for other fish. I have a Convict pair in the tank with my Trimac pair simply because the Cons spawn often and the Trimacs eat the fry (letting them live together saves me the step of catching the Con fry).

But I must admit, in the end, Iâ€™ve never been able to breed fish as food to a degree that justifies the input (in and of itself).

In other words, itâ€™s not worth it to feed & house a Con pair for 100~400 fry per 4~6 weeksâ€¦

But, if you enjoy having the pair, this joy may be enough to offset the â€˜lossâ€™. As I said, I have several pairs of pet fish that spawn regularly and I use the offspring as food. They do not produce enough fry to justify the expense of keeping the pairâ€¦ but the pair are my pet fish that I have anywayâ€¦


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## RyanR (Apr 29, 2008)

I'm considering breeding glass shrimp... mostly to offset their likely loss as cichlid tank cleaners.

I've got a few spare tanks now, and I thought it'd be fun to get some freshwater crustaceans going, anyway.

As for feeding with store bought "feeders", I'd just be wary because these fish don't get fed much (if at all!) in the store, so there's little nutritional value in them... and the worst case scenario is that they bring some creepy disease with them. Not worth it in my opinion.

-Ryan


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## Eb0la11 (Feb 29, 2008)

Yeah I wouldnt ever buy LFS feeders, I already know that. Heck you cant even buy a pet fish at those stores without taking a good look at its health...

Hmmm, Im just wondeirng if I should put some of these baby fish in my tank or not to feed to some of my fish... Id feel kinda bad lol. They're like 2 months old now.


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## blairo1 (May 7, 2006)

Mmm tasty fry.

I tried the whole feeding unwanted fry to my Rotkeil "thing" and you know what happened. I ended up selling 18 of the buggers because they had a whale of a time in the tank, didn't get eaten at all :roll:.

Why not culture brine shrimp? It's stupidly cheap AND easy to do, plus you can harvest daily. I got a brine shrimp culture kit for Â£5 then you just need the airpump and artemia.

OR

You can catch huge numbers of river shrimp, set up a tank outdoors with a filter to keep them all in until you know they're nice and clean and then feed them - this is my plan.

OR

You could culture mosquito larvae (bloodworm).

OR

If you have a nice compost heap you can get a bunch of earthworms going, all you need to do with them is chuck them into a glass of water to clean them off, wait for them to pass out all the dirt, cut up and feed.


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## JWerner2 (Jul 7, 2008)

Brine, Cons and Live bearer's are all the easiest and many people do it.

Brine are the only ones I found worth the time and turn around rate.


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## MetalHead06351 (Oct 3, 2007)

I tried breeding guppies to feed my fish, not worth the effort. Even though they reproduce often it is not often enough or enough fry to keep it going.


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## wmayes (Oct 22, 2007)

Blairo: are you sure that you really want to do to that? I would be afraid of introducing something to my tank even _after_ having filtration for awhile.


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## blairo1 (May 7, 2006)

I would be somewhat more hesitant to just collect any old shrimp from any old river but if you know that the water they come from is unpolluted by runoff etc then why not. QT them for 2-4 weeks with lots of WC's, the other guy adds shrimp friendly !? anti-bacterial meds for the first week and then spends the next 3 "flushing" them out ready for feeding....

I could just as easily breed my own and this would eliminate the risk, so that's what I'd recommend to others, it's just I know I can get nice clean shrimp in huge numbers, regularly.


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## kingpoiuy (Jun 9, 2008)

We got some of those baby brine shrimp eggs and hatched them. It was a major pain in my opinion. Had to watch them very close. Their egg shells are a pain to clean up. And they only lasted 24 hours. Then on top of that my fish didn't even like them. And they got sucked up in the filter because they are so small.

I must be missing something. Maybe because they were "baby" and not normal ones.


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## JWerner2 (Jul 7, 2008)

I wish I could find some river shrimp around here :-?


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## Eb0la11 (Feb 29, 2008)

Hmmm, some interesting suggestions.

I dont get what you guys are saying it isnt worth the effort. I wouldnt need live food for my fish at every meal. I wouldnt need spawning to occur regularly enough to feed my main tank all the time. It'd be like every once in a while you'd throw a few fish in that are growing out in a diff tank. I've got like 50 pretty good sized meals swimming around in another tank.

Should I sell them or feed them to my main fish? lol


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## kingpoiuy (Jun 9, 2008)

I have found that selling fish seems to be quite difficult. I'd feed them.

The only issue I can see is if one doesn't get eaten then you have to find something to do with it.

Not sure what the hassle is other than that.


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## JWerner2 (Jul 7, 2008)

Eb0la11 said:


> Hmmm, some interesting suggestions.
> 
> I dont get what you guys are saying it isnt worth the effort. I wouldnt need live food for my fish at every meal. I wouldnt need spawning to occur regularly enough to feed my main tank all the time.


Give it a shot.

I think after you try it you'll see what we are talking about.

Maybe you will have better luck.


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

I'd say that it totally depends on the fish that you want to feed whether or not breeding your own food is worthwhile.

E.g. if you had an oscar and enjoyed feeding it the occasional live food as a treat then why not breed that treat. The rest of the time you can stick to pellets.

If you have a predator that you cannot mix pellets and live food like a Clown Knife, then I wouldn't try to breed food... I'd stick 100% to pellets.


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## JWerner2 (Jul 7, 2008)

Its hard unless you have multiple tanks that are all breeding at different times.

I always ended up having them when I couldn't use them and not having any when I could. Then you have the larger predators so you need larger feeders and that takes time.


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

I'd agree... breeding fish for live food has to be a three tank minimum arrangement... breeder tank, grow out tank, predator tank.


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## Mustang Boy (May 2, 2008)

one of my LFS sells feeder guppies and i have been thinking about setting up a small tank for some of those and once they were thoroughly quarantined use the fry that they would undoubtedly spawn as treats for my tanks but this will be some time in the future


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## Eb0la11 (Feb 29, 2008)

I'm prob just gonna call the fish store pretty soon here and see what I can get for em. I'd take almost whatever... Starting not to care lol.


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