For that you would need a lot more than a 9 gallon tank. Get a couple of 10-20g growout tanks.
what feeder fish?
- Thread starter the fox
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For that you would need a lot more than a 9 gallon tank. Get a couple of 10-20g growout tanks.
Speaking from experience, it's not worth the trouble and expense to try and raise feeders as a primary source of food, for treats and exercise sure, but not as a staple. You need a large volume of water, far more than the tank you have the oscars in, to raise even a fraction of live food that the oscars will consume.
I have a golf course lake locally that has millions of mosquito fish and I catch them by the hundreds to feed to my preds, a large oscar will eat 20 and still be hungry.
I have a golf course lake locally that has millions of mosquito fish and I catch them by the hundreds to feed to my preds, a large oscar will eat 20 and still be hungry.
Ok sorry but you guys dont get it I just need a way to breed a livebearer that will get millions of the buggers at a time only in the 9gal tank no bigger. Simply some type of method. And i do not only feed them guppies its just something to keep the oscars from being so bored.
Everybody does get it, and its just that you can not have millions of buggers in a 9 gallon tank?
You need to clearly define your objective first. If you want to give the oscar's some fun they will prefer having full grown fish because they swim faster and maneuver more quickly. If you are looking for nutrition I would consider many of the suggestions made, i.e. worms, brine shrimp, etc. Above all, do not feed your lovely oscars only feeders! It would be like you sending your child to the local fastfood restaurant every day, 3 times a day for meals...would lead quickly to malnutrition! When I had my red devils I had a couple of small styrofoam ice chests that I used to raise the mommas and pappas of the feeders (I used styrofoam because I did not need to look in from the side and because it saved electricity from not needing the heater as much. I started off with a couple of males and 8-10 females in each ice chest and when i saw the mommas about to burst I would put them in another ice chest tank ( my maternity ward) with small breeding nets. After the fish were born I would scoop them out quickly and put them into a 5 gallon bucket that had a heater and sponge filter. Each batch of babies had their own bucket. You really don't need to keep them as separated as I did but I felt it helped me keep the babies from being eaten and also helped me pick out big fish for the red devils - all the fish in each bucket were about the same size since they were all born at about the same time so when they were big enough I would just scoop them all up and toss em into my red devil tank
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This may work for you but in general this is not a good idea. The Fertilizer used by the golf course or any pesticide in the water can poison the fish and inturn poison yours.
Buying bait fish from a fishing shop would be a better idea.
-bellum
It wil ltake a bit of effort as the adult guppies will readily eat the fry. Even the mother will eat her young after 2-3 hours... You will need to keep the mother in a breeding net or tank within the larger tank. Cleaning will be your hard part and seperating the adults form the fry (tank seperator maybe?).
For a 9-10G tank: 1-2 males for 5-6 females, bare-bottom.
Wait every 4 weeks, allow them to mature for a month (or 2), and then every 4 weeks you will have older guppy fries (way too small for an Oscar as they would prefer the 2+ month guppies better).
Really you will need a bit more for this to be a success/worth while, but on a very small scale (and I would also add, frustrating) this could work for a time, but certainly not efficiently.
