Live Food

[cane]

is it ok to buy little fish to feed my bigger fish??

 

[b.c.f.c]

i surpose it depends waht fish you have got and what fish you want to feed them.eg:if your live bearers have fry and you have too many and you dont want to raise them,but you have say a betta you could feed some to him/her.and of corse its fine to feed bigger fish fry.

 

[cane]

how about buyin little tetra for my catfish??

 

[b.c.f.c]

depends what cat fish they are but that could get very expensive.

 

[cane]

to be honest i dont know what kind they are lol ive been trying to find out on forums they are about 3 or 4 inches long quite chunky and blackish in colour and have markings like a leopard any ideas??

 

[Bloo]

You might want to check out Planet Catfish - got to Cat-eLog and look under "C, LDA & L-numbers", for pictures of them all.

As far as I know, it's illegal to purposely feed live fish to other fish.

By the way, you might want to check your email and click on the validation link - this will enable you to post and reply in other sections than just beginners.

 

[cane]

thx bloo but i aint got no validation link

omg its gonna take me 2 weeks to look through that list of species i had no idea there was so many lol

 

[timmystood]

You could say its only natural - bigger fish eats smaller fish!
But like b.c.f.c says - it will get very expensive and I agree with bloozoo2 - I think its illegal, although everyone does it with fry (but this is cheap as you breed them!)

 

[cane]

but as a treat once in a while is fine??like u say it is natural

 

[SkiFletch]

is it a tiger shovelnose catfish? only thing i could think of to match that description

is it seriuosly illegal in the UK to feed fish to others? that seems assinine to me. do you guys have things like pike, saltwater angelfish, or triggerfish for sale around where you live? cause the only things you can really feed larger versions of those are feeder fish... heck, my LFS sells feeder guppies, goldfish, and minnows to feed to larger carnivorous fish. they're only about $0.15 a piece but I'm told some of those larger fish I mentioned can eat upwards of 10 feeders in a day. one of the guys at my LFS let me watch while he fed the big Trigger they have with 10 goldfish. the big guy burned through them like they were candy in perhaps 30 seconds.

feeder fish are so common in the US that i'm surprised its illegal in the UK...

 

[dwarfgourami]

I believe it is only illegal if they are fed in such a way as to cause undue stress or pain. A feeder guppy being gulped down by a large fish probably would not count (or at least nobody would be bothered to prosecute), but something like feeding live rabbits to your pitbull terriers would almost certainly get you into trouble. I believe snake owners in this country feed dead mice because being stalked by a boa constrictor would conceivably come within the scope of this law.

I have not seen fish for sale labelled feeder fish in this country, though that may be because of limited experience. It may be due to the above law, but also to the fact that feeder fish are known to be disease carriers of low nutritional quality, so that keepers of carnivores might be better off making private arrangements, so perhaps there is not the market.

 

[CFC]

The use of live feeders in the UK is a very grey area of law, at present it is illegal to feed any vertabrate animal to another animal unless it is killed first (yes bizzarrely you can take a live mouse, knock it over the head and feed it to a snake but you cant just give the live mouse to the snake) but a member wrote to the RSPCA and recieved a reply saying that fish are not directly covered by this law.

But... I do know of at least one case where a pub owner was prosicuted by the RSPCA for animal cruelty for feeding live guppies to his Oscar and allowing the customers to place bets on which one would last longest with the proceeds going to charity.

In my opinion as a keeper of predatory fish the use of live feeders is unessesary in 99% of cases as almost all fish will accept frozen foods as a substitute.

 

[dwarfgourami]

In the present case, the first concern should be to identify the fish you have, as that is the only way we are going to know about its dietary needs. I know you're busy leafing through Planet Catfish, but would you be able to post us a pic? All right so I can only identify a guppy with my glasses on, but there are some seriously good people on here!

 

[cane]

i looked on planet catfish still no joy identifying them good idea bout the picture i will post 1 up later thx

 

[consp]

It is only illegal to feed lives in some countries. Here in the UK this practice is illegal but many people keep small fish in with large fish which tend to just "dissapear"