predator fish

you had a leichardti!? ive been looking for one forever. oh wait your from australia. i really want one bad but all i see are jardinis. ive had good luck getting arowanas off live food but some fish are basically impossible. i fed a few of my belesox babies only prepared food and their growth rate was terrible. plus i didnt get to see them at their best-ambush predators.
 
yeah i had one nice fish. their native here so i caught mine when i lived in queenland i just went to the gulf and netted the first juvie i saw(which took me ages) then i grew him up in a 8x2x2.5 but he surcome to a smashed heater.:(
 
Other than cost ( if you don't breed your own food) and percieved danger (if you don't breed your own food) what would be a reason to purposefully change the eating habits of a predatory fish. I'm not trying to be difficult, I am very curious because the concept is something I never thought of.
 
dwarf pike cichlid would work well. Feeding them feeders is perfectly fine. Mix up there diet as well, but dont worry about people saying it is "not advised"!!! people do it all the time and I have for 15 years with Oscars and Pikes with never once a problem. I also feed them frozen and pellets as well.
 
daveedka--often, feeder fish differ substantially in nutritional value from the fish these predators normally consume. Feeder goldies seldom supply the vitamins needed for a healthy fish, unless special effort is made to gut load them. Also, goldies have a lot of cartilege and bone that can't always be digested or regurgitated, resulting in intestinal blockages.

Many people continue to use feeder FW fish for their marine animals-and usually end up killing their marine fish fairly quickly. While I haven't heard of this happening as often in FW predators, I do know the nutritional value of goldfish is not on par with very many noraml prey fish for most aquarium predators.
 
OG, I've never used goldies, would guppies fall into the same class as goldies. They seem to me being a tropical fish to be more like natural prey, and as I have said, I would only feed them as a treat and not regular diet. The rare exception would be those few fish that only eat live prey, and even then, variety and nutrified feeders would be in order. I am not argueing that feeders should be a staple diet for predatory fish, I am just curios why someone would try to alter natural feeding instincts, to avoid feeding feeders. I have never been an advocate of feeding FW feeders to SW fish, I know a lot of people do it but it seems unnatural to me. I have a couple of friends who feed guppies to their lionfish and groupers, but not as an exclusive food source.
 
as far as i know fish dont eat pellets in the wild:D but most fish that are fed feeders are usually americans but dont forget lots of malawians and tangs eat live food but they are fed a prepared diet for a larger % of their lives IMO thats surpressing the natural instincts also. thats like my thorny devil lizard only eats one type of ant in the wild but i now feed it frozen ants(thawed of course) and pellets which mimic the nutrition thats it would get if it were in the wild.

most fish take live food if offered but the main concern is the disease some(uninformed) people buy feeders from a LFS which keep hundreds of fish in the same tank and most are riddled with disease IME just to see their oscar etc chase it down

so i breed my feeders weather it be my empress fry,guppys etc which i know is 100% free of disease this helps the fish and me in the long run as white spot or and internal disease isnt very nice to treat when you know it could have been avioded;)
 
No, wild fish don't eat pellets--but pellets can be formulated to be a close match on the nutritional value of the wild food source. Goldfish can't, even with gut loading. Guppies are a better choice--they don't have the fats that goldies do.
 
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