# is ti bad to feed your cichlids minnow



## lab123 (Oct 29, 2011)

is it or do they eat something elss


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## brinkles (Jan 30, 2011)

Don't give them live food that you didn't raise yourself, it often will introduce disease. Many fish will get sick if they eat too much meat, as well.


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

Depends on which cichlids also. The answer would be different for demasoni versus Nimbochromis, etc.


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## why_spyder (Mar 2, 2006)

+1 - species choice is critical.


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## Fogelhund (Dec 3, 2002)

Feeding live fish to your pet fish is really depend on whether the species are natural predators of small fish to begin with.

If I'm correct, you have a red zebra, ob zebra and auratus. These are NOT predators of small fish in the wild, with most of their diet consisting of vegetable matter. Feeding them fish could kill them.

Having said that, if you did have fish that eat small fish in the wild, you would need to ensure that your supply of food would not infect them with parasites, diseases etc... With minnows, you could not ensure such.


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## why_spyder (Mar 2, 2006)

Fogelhund said:


> If I'm correct, you have a red zebra, ob zebra and auratus. These are NOT predators of small fish in the wild, with most of their diet consisting of vegetable matter.


If you are correct on the species, I think it would be ha4rd to get them to consistently get the mbuna to eat minnows, less the minnows are quite small.


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