Feeding Cichlids and other fish meat

FishForums.net Pet of the Month
🐶 POTM Poll is Open! 🦎 Click here to Vote! 🐰

itiwhetu

Naturally First
Pet of the Month 🎖️
Joined
Apr 29, 2012
Messages
8,825
Reaction score
6,598
Location
Hokitika, New Zealand
I like to feed my Cichlids raw meat, also fish like Tetras (related to Piranhas) this is what I do.

Take your piece of meat. Freeze it, cut it into pieces, put it in a blender, lay it out on a tray, store it in the freezer in a plastic container. Feed it to your fish.
Meat I use, Venison, Ox heart, liver, kidney.
This is easy to do and cheap.
20220714_175413.jpg
20220714_175539.jpg
20220714_175726.jpg
20220714_175834.jpg
20220714_175702.jpg
 
To me, this is the worst advice I have seen in a long time. Fish will eat meat, but they are incapable of digesting animal fats. It's why aquarists before easy air travel for seafood used to use cow, and goat heart meat - they are the leanest organs in a mammal's body, so the fish can get protein from them. An average muscle from a mammal is too fatty to be of much value.

It's like the people who feed their dogs on zero meat diets - just not sensible.

I'm sorry to be so harsh, but there are many beginners on the forum who might jump on this as a great idea, and it could do real damage. Undigested food pollutes water. It's only benefit is to creatures that feed on ammonia.
 
While different fishes have different requirement you might find this an interesting read:

My understanding is beef heart and meat in general is too fatty for long term health of most fishes. there is a video somewhere where a renowned expert talks about the misconception of feeding discus beef heart and how it harms the fishes.
 
Last edited:
All the dog related posts have now been moved to a new thread

Several posts have been deleted as they are meaningless now that the dog posts are no longer in this thread.
 
The funny thing here is that piranhas rarely eat meat. They are opportunistic scavengers. A friend who works with piranhas was telling me that speaking to the cops and fishermen in Manaus, Brazil, they feel that piranha bitten human bodies removed from the river were long dead when the fish found them.
Voraciously stripped to the bones, like in the movies? Nope. Little chunks, not to be too graphic.

I can't tell you how many fish I've seen with piranha bites on their fins, or skin. That's their food - fins, scales, fish muscle. If a cow overdoses and falls into the river, they'll have a go. Once it's ready.

I've watched video of divers in the middle of shoals of piranha. Big piranha. There have been no attacks in the videos. If the divers had been bleeding heavily, then there would be a danger. But I call urban legend, propagated by a few early fish-hunting explorers who wanted a little spice in their stories. A piranha in a tank can take your finger off. Cooped up, they are nasty beasts, and I hate dealing with them. But meat eaters?

Not serious info. The proverbial cows that they strip to the bone in minutes are rare in the Amazonian jungle, and if leaping piranhas looking for mammal meat took them down when they went for a drink where the forest has been cut down, there'd be less deforestation for cattle farming to worry about.
 
The funny thing here is that piranhas rarely eat meat. They are opportunistic scavengers. A friend who works with piranhas was telling me that speaking to the cops and fishermen in Manaus, Brazil, they feel that piranha bitten human bodies removed from the river were long dead when the fish found them.
Voraciously stripped to the bones, like in the movies? Nope. Little chunks, not to be too graphic.

I can't tell you how many fish I've seen with piranha bites on their fins, or skin. That's their food - fins, scales, fish muscle. If a cow overdoses and falls into the river, they'll have a go. Once it's ready.

I've watched video of divers in the middle of shoals of piranha. Big piranha. There have been no attacks in the videos. If the divers had been bleeding heavily, then there would be a danger. But I call urban legend, propagated by a few early fish-hunting explorers who wanted a little spice in their stories. A piranha in a tank can take your finger off. Cooped up, they are nasty beasts, and I hate dealing with them. But meat eaters?

Not serious info. The proverbial cows that they strip to the bone in minutes are rare in the Amazonian jungle, and if leaping piranhas looking for mammal meat took them down when they went for a drink where the forest has been cut down, there'd be less deforestation for cattle farming to worry about.
I may be remembering this wrong, but to get that famous footage of a dead cow or dead horse being stripped to the bone by them, didn't they dam off the river to trap the fish and then starve them for a while first? Plus of course it was hundreds of hungry piranha, not a few in a tank, lol. Yep, their reputation certainly isn't fitting.
 
To me, this is the worst advice I have seen in a long time. Fish will eat meat, but they are incapable of digesting animal fats. It's why aquarists before easy air travel for seafood used to use cow, and goat heart meat - they are the leanest organs in a mammal's body, so the fish can get protein from them. An average muscle from a mammal is too fatty to be of much value.

It's like the people who feed their dogs on zero meat diets - just not sensible.

I'm sorry to be so harsh, but there are many beginners on the forum who might jump on this as a great idea, and it could do real damage. Undigested food pollutes water. It's only benefit is to creatures that feed on ammonia.
Firstly, the meat is super lean. Secondly, I think my fish will die of a lot of other things before what I'm feeding them. Thirdly, I never plan to have undigested food in my tanks. Fourthly, I am now unsure if my Discus will die because they live in a planted tank, die because I don't do 75-100% water changes or die because of their diet. There is one thing for sure though they will at some stage die.
 

Most reactions

trending

Members online

Back
Top