Live food and parasites

[susiejames101]

Hi
I am feeding my congo puffer live large bloodworms ( his favourite!!) live brine shrimp and live ghost shrimp which i keep in a quarantine tank for at least a week before the puffer is allowed to eat them, but I have just read a post about live worms spreading parasites and am now rather worried!
I always change the water that the worms come in , take out any dead or weird looking ones and then keep them in the fridge with daily water changes until i feed them to the fish.
Are there any other precautions I should be taking. I want my puffer to live a long and happy life if at all possible

 

[OrionGirl]

You're caring for the live food correctly, and the odds of a parasite coming in are pretty slim with this care.

You might want to also offer snails--the additional crunch will really help prevent the teeth from overgrowing.

 

[Harlock]

I'm not so sure how it works in the fish trade, but when caring for snakes, I always fed previously frozen food. The freezing made sure any internal parasites were dead. Snakes like to be tease fed, so you'd usually dangle a mouse held in a set of forceps (and those forceps never seem long enough when you're feeding a venomous animal). Not sure if fish go for the action of a "live" animal or not, would anyone mind comfirming this? Anyway, if you want to make absolutely sure, you can always feed frozen food that has been thawed and rinsed properly.

 

[OrionGirl]

Wild caught fish sometimes have to be trained to take prepared foods, but not always. There are several methods--one is similar to what you used with snakes, another is to add prepared food in with the feeder so they associate the prepared stuff with live food, then gradually increase the prepared and reduce the live. Sometimes it just requires enough patience to starve the fish into taking the prepared foods, though--they can be stubborn.

However, with the worms, the water is typically where the parasites and problems come from, so a good rinse is enough to clean them for safe use.