Winter is coming, and I am curious what is or isnt possible to feed the little guys in my tropical tank? I see things like squash (stink) bugs, wasps, houseflies, housespiders and ants(black) which makes me curious to know if fish will eat these things. The fish I think that will eat these things the most is my loack. I also have a couple zebra danios.
They will love bugs. I feed mine bugs regularily. Most bugs will be fine. Use your own discretion when feeding them certain bugs though (don't feed them a carnivorous underwater beetle).
I've fed my fish a couple spiders and they seemed to like them. However I've read that some spider parts aren't digestable so I stopped feeding them. Plus you don't know where the bugs have been or what they could be carrying.
btw- I wouldnt even dare do wasps unless deader than a doornail prolly, OR the carny-type beetles. Even the stinkbugs sound not so good, but would be nice to feed the fish, rather than flushin' em.
I have given them daddy-lomg legs and my loach and my barb I used to have loved them.
i would avoid daddy long legs, personally...though this is up for debate, ive heard so many different opinions.
Ive heard that daddy long legs carry a rather toxic venom, though they have no real way of injecting it into a large organism. I had a praying mantis once who i fed a few daddy long legs and it died within a few days, aparently from injesting the toxin. I would also avoid feeding them wasps altogether, dead or alive. Wasps still have the capability to sting after they die (unless they're all dry and crusty, in which case you wouldnt want to feed your fish them anyways). If freshly killed the wasp nervous system can still respond to a pressure on their abdomen, even after they're dead for a while there is still the possibility that the stinger can inflict some damage. Its no big deal, just a precaution. Id stick with ants, crickets, flies and small spiders (i hate stinkbugs, they make your fingers...well.....stink).
FYI chunksofpoooo, the daddy long leg rumors are just myths. They have a very weak venom which would only cause irritation. The fangs are long enough to puncture human skin. I have personaly been witness to the cracking of this myth cause I'm like a kid I have to play with any and all insects and I happened to be the one to get bitten by a daddy long leg. Anyway just thought you might like to know that.
A couple of weeks ago Mythbusters (discovery channel) busted that myth.
They measured the fangs, got bit by one spider, and then tried to milk some posion to test for toxicity. Turns out they would have to milk several thousand spiders to get a very small drop of venom. The poison they managed to milk was found to be just mildly irritant.
I do feed my fish all kinds of bugs. I also grow mushrooms, so I have a steady supply of mycelium mites and mosquito larvae from the outdoors incubator water.
Once I put a damselfly in the tank, and by next morning it was gone. A few weeks later I found this very strange bug eating one black-molly fry. After some googling I found out it was a damselfly larva. No wonder fry production went from 30 fish every 6 weeks to less than 5. I just fed the larvae to the betta.
yeh, some of those bugs have some seriously killer larva (you ever take a look at a dragon fly larva?). But thanks for clearing up the whole daddly longlegs thing...now i have to figure out what killed that praying mantis
