Live Food For My Puffers?

[huntnikk]

Do you have to feed them live food from time to time or can you get away without doing it?


BTW I have a small Porcupine Puffer in my tank that I am asking about..

Ah, if it's a porkie you're asking about then you need to ask in the Marine fish section. Marine puffers are a little different in their needs to freshwater species.

gotcha... thanks will do..

 

[nmonks]

I am staggered by how many people like feeding large live animals to their pets! It's bizarre and saddening. There's no reason to feed live anything to a puffer, except perhaps snails. Why feed live crabs where perfectly serviceable krill and frozen shrimps and frozen crayfish, all with their shells on, can be obtained from the pet store and supermarket? Not only more convenient but also less expensive.

There's a good reason to stick with frozen food produced for aquarium fish: it's been irradiated, making it effectively sterile and safe as far as parasites go.

The fact that feeder guppies cost virtually nothing is a clue to their quality; they are parasite and bacteria timebombs. I know of no experienced fishkeepers writing for any of the publishers I work with who advocate feeding live fish. Even people keeping and breeding things like stingrays and snakeheads will tell you to avoid live fish as foods. There's no good reason to use live fish, except that some people like watching their pets hunt down live fish. If it is taking 5 minutes for the puffer to kill that "feeder crab", then surely that's not a quick kill and has to be cruel?

Would you feed your cat live mice nailed by their tails to the bowl so they couldn't run away?

Yours in disbelief,

Neale

 

[penguinpimp1990]

but isnt that just apart of nature? do you think that puffers never eat a crab or two in the wild?

 

[nmonks]

But Nature isn't captivity.

In Nature, the prey has a chance of escaping and going on to live a normal life. In captivity, the animal is basically thrown into a tank to be killed within a short space of time. It has no place to hide and no chance of escape. I have often seen half-dead goldfish, crabs with missing legs, and so on... so the idea the death is "quick and painless" doesn't even apply. I remember seeing a goldfish with its back half bitten off but the head floating and obviously alive and the gills breathing. Even in lesser cases than this, the feeder fish must spend hours or days being terrified by being in a tiny space with a much larger and plainly dangerous animal.

I guess it depends on how sympathetic you are to other animals. If you don't mind seeing pain and suffering, then fine, feed crabs and goldfish to whatever. But if you're the sort of person who does care about animals, then there's no way to justify what is essentially cruel and unnecessary. I keep fish, and became a zoologist, because I like animals; for me, that's the end of the story.

Cheers,

Neale

but isnt that just apart of nature? do you think that puffers never eat a crab or two in the wild?

 

[penguinpimp1990]

i like animals and i obviously dont like seeing them tortured but what I meant was feeding foods that wont be tortured. If feeder goldies are swept up right away by something like an oscar i dont consider that abuse. If the crabs are crushed right away by a big puffer like a nile puffer, i also dont consider that torture. But things like the goldfish you saw i do consider abuse/torture. I believe in using livefoods as long as they arent picked apart piece by piece in a long painful process. If theyre swallowed whole I dont see that as much torture as would using frozen/freeze dried foods, the companies that make frozen/freeze dried foods obviously had to kill these animals to make the food, and the process of making these foods would probally take just as long if not longer to kill them as would an oscar swallowing a goldfish.

 

[huntnikk]

But Nature isn't captivity.

In Nature, the prey has a chance of escaping and going on to live a normal life. In captivity, the animal is basically thrown into a tank to be killed within a short space of time. It has no place to hide and no chance of escape. I have often seen half-dead goldfish, crabs with missing legs, and so on... so the idea the death is "quick and painless" doesn't even apply. I remember seeing a goldfish with its back half bitten off but the head floating and obviously alive and the gills breathing. Even in lesser cases than this, the feeder fish must spend hours or days being terrified by being in a tiny space with a much larger and plainly dangerous animal.

I guess it depends on how sympathetic you are to other animals. If you don't mind seeing pain and suffering, then fine, feed crabs and goldfish to whatever. But if you're the sort of person who does care about animals, then there's no way to justify what is essentially cruel and unnecessary. I keep fish, and became a zoologist, because I like animals; for me, that's the end of the story.

Cheers,

Neale

but isnt that just apart of nature? do you think that puffers never eat a crab or two in the wild?

What about going fishing... alot of times you are using live bait.... on a hook...

 

[nmonks]

Indeed, and there are people who have moral issues with fishing, both from the use of live minnows as bait but also from the fact it (probably undeniably) causes pain to the fish that is hooked.

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2983045.stm

I'm actually have less strong feelings about this than feeding feeder fish. I enjoy fishing on the rare occasions I do it, though I don't use live bait. But I am certainly sensitive to the fact that something I find entertaining is clearly very unpleasant for a kind of animal I have great fondness for.

A practical argument could be made for fishing, in that however cruel it seems to me, in the big picture, anglers help maintain river habitats by being a powerful lobby group in favour of environmentally positive management. So the pain to a few fish is offset by the benefit to the entire community of fishes. By the same token, I'm broadly in favour of hunting, even though I personally find hunting cruel. It's just a shame that we enjoy doing this sort of thing to animals, and will only preserve their habitats if we allow ourselves to exploit those habitats for the purpose of hunting or fishing.

You can't really make this argument in favour of live feeder fish. They aren't essenial (except with a very few species) and in fact pose a potential risk in terms of introducing parasites.

Cheers,

Neale

What about going fishing... alot of times you are using live bait.... on a hook...