Sword Offspring....Ok Feeder Fish???

[thefishdude]

I'm thinking ahead a little here...

Would small to medium sized juvenile swords be a better live food to a larger carnivorous fish than the disease ridden feeders you can buy at the aquarium shop?? The swords in my 30 are breeding like rabbits, and I really have no place to put more of the little guys. I know that mom and dad are both healthy happy fish and when the fry are fed fishy steroids (baby brine) they only take about 14 days to get to a rather large size.

Anyone see an issue with doing this????

:well:

[Spinalcore]

I don't see any problems with it. I was even reading last night that alot of people have used convict fry as feeders. My opinion is any kind of fish can be used as a feeder if you want to put out the money for them in the first place and can't seem to even sell them to a pet store. As long as they are small enough to fit in the mouth of the fish that you wish to feed them to they will work. The only exeption is with Piranah they will eat the scales and fins of the other fish first in the wild.

[bozco]

I've used swords and sword/guppy hybrids as feeders

[Oxquo]

I am a very pro-fry feeder, bang on the money with the diseased feeder statement. The petstore I use to work in would have feeders arrive in barely suitable bags with as many as 800 feeder minnows per bag and 500 goldfish. Most were dead on arrival, the few that survived died usually days later and we were nearly out of feeders before the next shipment, not due to heavy sales, but due to the fact of heavy losses the store would order several times more than required. Believe it or not I could seldomly ever talk people out of buying those cheap feeders as pets or tank cycling fish. Imagine the stress just fighting for a breath of air with 500 other fish in a bag containing about 1/2 gallon of water but even worse 1 gallon of air.

Anyways My fish are diehards for fry and never look perkier, I have often used fry to enhance the breeding mood. Not only that but I have fed guppies to my angel while she was guarding her fry to prove a point, all 5 guppies disappeared all of the 20 fry were fine. Convicts are okay as feeders but beware, some are smarter than they look, and in say a 150 gallon planted tank, Hmmm, you have to decied what damage they could bring as larger fish, whereas a guppy or sword could be removed and fed to larger fish in another tank. As a matter of fact one of the best set-ups I ever had was a ten gallon with 8 female guppies and 1 male. Add tonnes of java moss and feed well with earthworm flake, this enlarges the amount of fry per spawn alot. Some fish I have had in the past started looking weak, stopped eating and had droopy fins, I threw about 5 fry in and they looked like teens again. Once the fish is back eating it can be put back on flake and frozen as well but few fish even sick ones can refuse live active food. One time though it all went weird and i dropped about 100 feeder firemouths into my community tank, The female convict beat the hell out of my other firemouths, convicts, dempseys and salvini's and engulfed every last fry. Two days later she was seen leading around her new enlarged family and even the male joined in on defence. To think what that would be like if they would care for baby discus with the same care. I would give up on BBS as a first food for livebearers though, swords mollies, platies guppies and even endlers can eat crushed flake from the get go. Saves you time and alot of money. Pump the fry up on a good diet of vitaboost flake and you'll be better for it financially.

[Toirtis]

Most of my fish are predators....I could not even begin to guess at how many tens of thousands of molly, guppy, sword, platy and convict fry I have fed over the past 20 years.

[Smokey]

thefishdude - good idea. If you have abundant fry _ use them as food. This is what occurs in nature. and you save $$.$$. Plus; raising your own food gives you the oppertunity to feed good, healthy food to the growing species.

Smokey

Eat or get eaten.. :smilebig:

[Toirtis]

Smokey

Eat or get eaten.. :smilebig:

Or as I often say...."Flake is what food eats" :smilebig:

[Madness]

Or as I often say...."Flake is what food eats"

Lol, great quote... my feeders are the only thing that gets flake in my house

[Kremdelakrem]

I've never used swords as feeders, what I tend to do is keep several guppies in with Angel fish, and gouramis, and rainbows, and let them eat the offspring directly (taking into account the adults are picked on so the tank has to be well planted. I always thought swords were a bit too valuable to use as feeders, but supply and demand, and you have a supply, so the demand is low, so why not? If you keep them around and crowd the tanks, that can only lead to bad things. So go for it if you have the stomach.