Advantages and Disadvantages of feeders

[mickgibbo]

Hello,

I was wondering what the advantages/disadvantages of feeding my fis feeders are.

I have 100 convicts and I see the only use for them is as feeders.

Will it make the fish more agressive towards each other??

Thanks

[Teamsherman]

I'll just put this up as a notice to users, but im really unsure of how its best dealt with by Admin so if they can clarrify for the general consensus and me that would be great.

Cheers, Alan.

Animal cruelty

Please note: Animal cruelty guidelines prohibit the feeding of live vertebrates to other animals. We discourage this practice and will remove posts, which indicate its implementation without notice.

[Ducksta]

Hmmm, well ignoring that little bit of law(??)

Feeding of live foods really only serves for entertainment purposes. There is no extra nutritional value in feeder fish than is contained in good quality dry foods. In fact, there is less.

There is always the chance the feeders are carrying a parasite. Considering most people dont quarantine feeders the same way they would a new showpiece fish, the risk is increased of spreading a disease. Given the convicts, I take it you bred them? This risk is substantially less but not gone.

The advantages of lives foods include:

Can often help in getting finisky fish or fish that are off their foods to eat. Definately the case with newly wildcaught and totally predatory species.

It is the best way IMO of ridding oneself of unwanted fry. This may include deformed or hybrid fry which are of no use and need to be culled. It may also include fry which you cannot raise due to space issues, or fry which would cost more to raise than would return once at size.

[mickgibbo]

Great dit of Info thanks for that. I wouldnt regard it as cruelty as Im sure it would be far more cruel to flush them or just throw them in the bin.

Thanks for your advice.

Do you think it would make them more agressive

[Burek]

i dont like feeding my fish feeder fish,

its not nice to see little fish getting eaten by big fish, how the little fish are scared of the big fish and about to get eaten, so slack to the small fish.

i say Let them Live, they are fish for heavens sake, they need to live!!!!!!!

[Mr.Tang]

why not trade em at your lfs or majestic at taren point and get credit for food so you don't have to spend money

[efc01]

Animal cruelty hay?? Well I see that both you 'DanielK' and 'teamsherman' are big fans of fishing, now catching fish with a dirty great big piece of steel could well be called animal cruelty as well????

I love fishing and can see no reason why feeding 'feeders' to your fish are a problem.

It will be battle of the fittest if you drop 100 convicts into your tank as not all of them will get eaten at once and the strong will survive.

Go for gold I say!!

Nick

[Burek]

Fishing is not any different from killing cows or lambs for dinner. They feel pain as well, so why isn't anyone protecting them?

Some people my freind depend on fish, some live near the shores of the lakes etc africa and heavily rely on fish for food.

But feeding feeders to other fish is cruel because in the wild alot of fry dont survive and its better if we keep them so the parents are happy, the parents dont wanna have all that sex for nothing, they do it because they want to see there babies grow up and not Being FED to other fish

[Mr.Tang]

if ou like the idea of someone else enjoying the act of caring for the convicts trade em in - if you like the idea of watch fish struggle to survive in an aquarium why did you get into the hobby?

[Burek]

Yes, well said Mr Tang

[canerod]

To answer the original question, no it will not make your fish more aggressive,

either they are an aggresssive fish or they are not. What it may do is give them a taste for fry so that if you let them spawn in the tank they may be more encouraged to actively hunt their own fry rather than take them as a matter of opportunity, having said that i have a group of 4 peacocks and i allowed one to spit in the tank and in under 8 hours they had reduced the mouthful of fry to 1 survivor, and i do not feed feeder fish to peacocks, so they dont seem to need much encouragement.

and Danielk im starting to wonder at your intelligence, your sprouting off about the rights of the fish yet you keep fish in a small tank, when their rightful place is in one of the worlds largest lakes. Dont be so cruel, release your fish back into the lake they belong in .

[Lepperfish]

LOL

[Burek]

we are doing a favour to some fish because they are nearly extinct, breeding them in a tank is helping them if we let them out in the lakes and they get eaten.....

without tanks, soem fish woudint be here

[Ash]

But feeding feeders to other fish is cruel because in the wild alot of fry dont survive and its better if we keep them so the parents are happy, the parents dont wanna  have all that sex for nothing, they do it because they want to see there babies grow up and not Being FED to other fish

and why don't a lot of fry survive in the wild? they get bloody well eaten is why!

I don't see how it's any crueler to feed off excess fry than to end up having too many to get rid of by other means, in my area a lot of shops won't even take convicts for free, that leave you with way too many fish in your tank - worse than feeding them off IMO

[Burek]

yeh.... they do get eaten in the wild most of the time. but we have tanks here for them so they dont get eaten

if shops dont want them, then give it away to people, who might be new in the hobby or havent even had fish yet, they would probally get it .

I dont think parents in the wild usually eat there own fry unless there 100% starving and theres no more food left.. but i dont see a reason why you should feed feeders to fish, fish are here to be kept, not given as lunch to other fish.

Umm if ya dont have enougth space for fry and you know it already that you woudint have space, not worth breeding fish then if your just gonna give it away or use it as feeders.

("){^_^}(") ("){$+$}(")

.

[Teamsherman]

The rules of the forum state what i have already posted in the first reply.

Please, if the topic is to stay, can we be more civilised about it and stick to the topic at hand. The question was about advantages and disadvantages of feeding feeders not our personal opinions on it. Can we stick to that till the whole topic is given the go ahead or the boot?

Cheers, Alan.

[Burek]

disadvantage of feeders is the higher chance of carry disease if from a shop or something, slack to fish, waste of fish.

thats my disadvantages of feeding feeder fish

[slinky]

advantages

i dont really see any except for using feeders to feed extremely difficult fish

disadvantages

it just slack, weres the joy in seeing another fish trying swim for its fishy live from a big fish.

so i vote dont use feeders.

slinky

[BaZ]

To start with, this is a Food question so I have moved it to the technical forum where we discuss foods and feeding techniques

Secondly, let's keep this discussion on track. The orignal question was with regard to the dietary benefits of feeders, not a question about whether we should all be vegetarian or not

Thirdly, I was not aware of that clause being anywhere in our rules Perhaps I should re-aquaint myself with the terms and conditions

Last but not least, I don't feel that it is necessary to feed live fish to any fish that we keep in a tank. I think there are other ways which we can give them the correct diet without needing to buy or breed feeders.

However, if you were to breed your own feeders they should be disease-free, and as long as you were to also provide other foods as part of a varied diet they should do your fish no harm.

[BaZ]

I have just checked the terms of use and it seems we are indeed discussing an illegal topic. I had no idea, and it just goes to show what a good job some of the newer mods do around here

As teamsherman has asked, lets keep this on track so that it might stay. If we all become tree-hugging hippies or chainsaw-wielding forest haters the thread wont stay here very long at all.

If the rules change I'll let u all know and we can have a big vegetarian vs steak lovers showdown

[Chuckmeister]

Teamsherman... Isn't this a forum for discussion??? .... I can't see anything wrong with the post!!!!

As far as the original question was asked, personally I do think that feeding live food to your fish will increase the natural hunting instinct of certain species. For example the D. compressicep is a predatory hunter and for this particular species to hone those instincts it requires 'live food'!!! If you are talking about Mbuna, the dietary requirements are totally different as they are piscivores and opportunistic feeders.

My thought is if you dont feed your predatory fish live food, you destroy an inborn instinct particular to that species. I feed all my fish live food as part of a varied diet as this is what I believe to be normal for the fish.

To talk about conservation of species in tanks in an Australian environment is somewhat of a joke. To say that feeding live convicts to a 'hungry fish' is cruel is to have a lack of understanding of the way nature works. The theory of fish not eating their own fry is absurd. A parent will guard their fry until the point of self sufficiency and then it will be a free for all where the parent will lose the parenting instinct.

Chuck

[mickgibbo]

I agree with that, the fish were bread originally for a barramundi that wont take dead food. Now it has a steady diet of convicts and has made the fish look alot better.

I decided to give the feeders a go in my show tank and it worked a treat the fish loved it and actually made a few slower fish very active.

Thanks for everyones opinion I got the info that I needed.

[Lv426]

Teamsherman... Isn't this a forum for discussion??? ..

Is it not better to discuss all matters pertaining to keeping aquarium fish (within reason)?. I would rather be able to be informed rather than blindly act. We are here to discuss and share any knowledge, ideas and opinions that we might have? Take what you like and leave the rest i say? At the end of the day you can and probably will do what you want anyway. As far as adv and disadv go I think the risks outweigh the benefits, but it is good to have another method to tempt finicky eaters. I think of 'feeders' as an occasional treat. I have no moral issues regarding this. I think you must examine your own motives for using feeders and decide whether you are acting in your fishes interest or your own.