Reptile and fish keeping approaches?

[GaryE29 144]

One of the local guys dropped by yesterday, looked through my set up and announced I was in the wrong hobby. Once again, I was told I should be a reptile keeper. Why?

I have live food cultures.

I have great respect for the keepers of weird creatures who set up and run live food cultures. It takes time and energy to make a go of cultured foods, but it is essential for the health and well being of a lot of pets. I certainly couldn't have run much live food when I lived in flats, or when I had one or two show tanks in the living room. Cultures are occasionally smelly and, well, alive.

My local fish store has an entire section devoted to live food cultures that unfortunately involve insects too large for my fish. When he's gotten in 'fish food sized' cultures, they don't sell. But the reptile crew go through all he ships in every month, and he ships in a lot.

What do you think the mindset difference is? There seem to be artificial reptile foods. There are both fish and reptiles that need live food if we are going to keep them, but in the aquarium hobby, most people look away from them, while the reptile people look for them. It's always been an interesting difference. Why?

 

[CassCats6 3]

I keep both. Mind you, the only live foods I keep for the reptile hobby are mealworms. Our snake eats frozen baby mice from a specific store. The store raises the mice themselves.

So from this perspective here, my snake is very picky. He will not take mice bought from other stores. Snakes in the hobby can be particularly weird when it comes to feeding, so culturing live foods in this case can be necessary if you've got a picky snake. I have to travel a 4 hour round trip just to get his food because he is a picky little bugger lol

Our gecko on the other hand gets her Pangea premixed food as her staple, but then is also supplemented with mealworms or crickets once a week. They're mostly fruit eaters, but still should have a weekly treat of bugs. Mealworms are easiest to raise.

Bonus, the mealies can be fed to my fish. And I also keep pet ants and spiders who also eat them! When I have too many, I donate the excess to my local wildlife rescue who needs them for birds and bats.

They're easy to keep and raise. I've been raising the same culture now for almost 15 years. It's cheaper than buying them all of the time and they dont smell like microworms do for fish


Id love to raise some discoid roaches as theyre very nutritious feeders for both reptiles and ants, alas husband draws the line at the roaches shame, theyre pretty cute too

 

[Jennet9 67]

After keeping fish for many years and having to get rid of them due to a divorce and a time spent with my parents before getting housing again, I started to keep mainly snakes, but also a couple of gecko's and a blue tongue skink.

My main snakes were Amazon Tree Boa's (a couple of bitey little baggages amongst those), a Western Hognose who was just 12 inches long and could be a pain in the ass to get to feed, and a cornsnake or two.

I also had two high yellow Carpet Pythons from Papua New Guinea, and my big lad who was a carpet python that I rescued and was 9.5 feet long when I got him.

Some of my snakes could be very picky eaters when they wanted to be. My Western Hognose once went 16 weeks without eating.

I never had to resort to using live food.

 

[GaryE29 144]

Generally, when I think of live food here, I'm engaging in a basic stupid-human distinction. I couldn't raise mammals to feed my fish. Even if they were small enough. I can, however, raise bugs. Somehow, invertebrates, like plants, have a rough time with me.

I'm interested in why reptile/herp people seems really comfortable making that extra effort, and why a lot of fish people aren't. I think fish are fantastic and worth all the efforts we can make, but a lot of hobbyists who raise foods for their lizards won't do it for the fishtanks next door. It's just curiosity.

I wish mealworms were small enough for my killies.

 

[TwoTankAmin24]

I do not keep reptiles and have no interest in doing so, But I have kept a lot of fish over the past 25 years including breeding a number of them. I did try doing some live foods many years ago. When my DD black angels spawned and I tried to raise the fry (I had over 100 eggs per spawn) I had to hatch BBS for them. I had to hatch them in a gallon mason jar in my the bathroom next to a 10 gal grow tank for BN.

This used to coat the tank glass next to the jar with salt. The bubbles coming out of the jar wout hoit the glass then the water evaporate leaving the salt behind. I used to get frozen Cyclop-eeze back then and would beging mixing it in with the BBS after the first week. By the end of week 2 the fry were eating 100% cyclops. The fish were giving me 100+ eggs every 2 weeks and I realized I did not want to breed angels.

Live Blackworms were one of the preferred live foods for conditioning the Hypancistrus plecos I began working with not long after I gave up on the angels. But they are stinky and needed to be kept in the fridge which was not going to happen. So, instead I began trying red wigglers worms which I would buy online and get mailed to me. These were easy, or soI thought. I kept them in a styro container with a lid and filled with damp peat.

The problem with red wigglers is that they dislike light and will stay in the peat below the surface as long as it is light above. So I tried using the lid of the styro overnight to keep them inside the box. This does not work as they are able to get out of the styro despite having the lid on it and I had my first experience with a floor full of dead worms the next morning. But the fish loved the worms and I would even cut some in half to feed to corys. A single meal of live worms and the corys would spawn withing a week.

So I got the bright Idea of getting a small goose neck desk lamp and a timer. The lamp was over the surface of the styro and the timer would turn it on before dark and off after daylight. I set the box on the hearth of the fireplace which was L shaped was in the living room and had lots of room for the box of worms This worked well until one night the power went out and so did the light. The next morning I had 100+ dried worms all over the carpet. This ended my using red wigglers.

The challenge was trying to find foods with close to the same value as live. The answer was frozen. But, I like to have a mixture of foods and also used kensfish sinking sticks. I made my own blend. And then I discovered Repashy foods, especially Spawn & Grow. I was still using the froznn Cylcop-eeze. But the only lake with them had the population crash and they were never able to get the colony re-established. Repachy foods helped a lot.

The last major dietary change I made for my fish was to switch from the kensfish food to Ebo-Aquaristik fro,=m Germany. I would buy dir3ectly from them and have the food sent to me. This worked well as the $800 exemtion from paying any fees to import things meant my few $100 order went "un-taxed." And then the president did away with that exemption and I was forced to buy the Ebo food from sources inside the states.

I have not used any live foods for almost 20 years now. The frozen and Repashy have worked very well for me as the second best option after live. For me live was one step to far for me to go. If I had not been able to succeed with my alternatives I am not sure what I would have done. While I live in a nice place, it is on the small side and despite being single I had other family members involved with living here and today my brother and I share the place. It has no basement so my tanks have been spread out and I have always been space constrained. So, live foods we not a viable option especially if they need to be in the shared fridge.

What I can say is that the foods I have been feeding for many years have worked pretty well. I consider diet to be one of the most important things we control in terms of caring for fish. I cannot speak to the reptile issues. But i can say breeding plecos have paid for every penny I have or do spend on keeping fish. This means all my fish not just the plecos.

However. I do know that live foods are best, but what I have is as close to live as I can get and it seems to have been close enough. But I also pay up for frozen and Repashy because it is what I need since live are just not an option. One benefit to hold the prices down a bit for the frozen is due to the fact that one of the folks who run my fish club brings a stryro full of frozen Hikari foods to every meeting and sells them to the members for a fair amount less than I would have to pay buying them online. For ex: a 1 lb slab of brine Shrimp is $8. I also buy frozen foods from Jehmco which are a bit less expensive as well. I ordered a few $100s worth twice a year.

For fry and smaller fish I now use frozen rotifers and a few frozen daphnia. I no longer do blood worms as I am quite allergic to them and even wearing latex exam gloves does not help. I really miss the Cyclo-eeze.

p.s. Imo, the difference between reptiles and fish is that fish must be fed almost daily while the reptiles do not need this. So. for them it is less work doing live.

 

[CassCats6 3]

I think it comes down to there being a stigma about fish not being interactive or personable pets, something more as living decorations rather than something worthy of additional effort.

I get questioned why I do a variety of foods for my fish instead of just getting a cheap single type of food and calling it a day.

I personally wouldn't be able to raise mice nor be able to feed live mice to my snake. So I made sure to get one that was already eating predead.
I have to feed live mealworms to the gecko but theyre eaten very quickly, no suffering. Fish and ants get them pre-killed. I don't want even mealworms to suffer needlessly. But that's me

 

[Rusty_Shackleford29 145]

I think it's just consumerism plain and simple.
I'm no expert in the history of fish keeping but I'm fairly certain back in the day all there was was live foods cultured by the fish keeper. As aquariums became more popular the pet industry introduced prepared foods as a convenience. Remember thr old Hartz fish food in the metal or later cardboard box? Consumers amd fish ate it up and the convenience stuck.

On the other hand in the world of reptile keeping, prepared foods is a relatively new thing. Prepared foods like crested gecko foods or bearded dragon foods have only been around for the last 15-20 years.
It may even go a little deeper than that, as there has always been an emphasis in the reptile hobby to use the appropriate and necessary vitamin and mineral supplements to keep reptiles in good health. There has also been an emphasis on using whole prey items, and properly gut loading those prey items.

As far as a wide view on animal nutrition and feeding, the reptile hobby is far ahead of the fish hobby. When was the last time you heard a conversation about vitamin and mineral supplements for fish? Yet it happens every day in the reptile hobby.

 

[emeraldking10 61]

I've kept amphibians and reptiles as well for years. I only fed them live food. Some live food I've cultured myself. But all other live food those amphibians and reptiles would need, I got those from my best friend (and he's also my steady co-exhibitor at vivaristic events), who cultured all types of live food. It's also his main focus at vivaristic events. And he only lives 15 minutes from my place.

 

[Back in the fold3 2]

I’ve never kept reptiles except one small Anole / Chameleon years ago . It perished and I think that’s because I couldn’t catch enough flies for him . I was just a kid at the time . I’ve known several reptile keepers over the years and all of them fed live food and they told me their lizards and snakes wouldn’t eat anything else but live food with the exception of frozen mice which come in various sizes from pinky to adult . Every pet shop I’ve ever been into sells crickets and mealworms at least so that tells me that reptiles are fussy . Shackleford is right about where reptile keepers are in relation to fish keepers as far as food goes . You read Dr. Innes and you’ll understand that fish keepers fed live food almost exclusively in the early days of the hobby .
I see a lot of similarities between fish and reptiles as far as their keeping and feeding go .

 

[GaryE29 144]

When I was 12, I had a snake I fed grasshoppers and things from the yard. I only had it for a few weeks as I'd caught it myself and I felt I should let it go. I named it Gordon, after our landlord. My mother was very mad about that. I think she had a vision of me calling the snake like you would a dog and him overhearing it.

Fish nutrition has improved a lot since the sawdust-like foods my grandfather used. I always had my canisters of tetra min - basic flake, growth flake, colour and veggie, and I rotated them religiously. They were the quality foods of the time, and I would use them now if they were around. A lot of what we get is marketing. The only flake I have found to be really different is the soldier fly larvae based stuff. There. I see a difference with killifish egg production.

SO yesterday I walked along the tanks, tearing off pieces of dulse/seaweed for the Loracarids, squirting turkey baster shots of white worms into some tanks and mosquito larvae into others, and taking scrapes of artemia off the brine shrimp net with a knife for the fry and some of the smaller species. The elderly man who taught me about fishkeeping when I was a kid had a tiny wheeled cart he'd put the foods on as he went along his aquarium store, although he also had meds and remedies on it as well. I may need one of those someday.

 

[Tomsfish9 52]

My favorite reptile kept was an Iguana.
Fed mostly fruit cocktail and canned cat food.
Iggy grew large [ 4+ feet with tail].
Easy peasy and no weekly trips for crickets or worms.
I feed premade or frozen food to my fish.
When I was breeding my fish, I used BBS daily.
That grew till there was almost not one tank out of 80+ that received some daily.
I think most shy away from live food for fish due to lack of ability to keep or raise it.
Micro worms do smell~! They smell even worse when they go bad~!
For me hatching BBS was simple as I had a marine fish tank, I would scoop water out of and many thanks to Brine Shrimp Direct for their great and affordable eggs.
I had 4@2-liter bottle hatchers going 24/7/365 and never had problems.
I drilled no holes but rather used rigid lines to get to the bottom of bottle and allow settling very easily by removing.
This made cleaning the bottles very simple.

I think people are more tolerant of the reptile 'requirements'.
On that note the world is full of premade fish foods, so avg. fish keeper knows no better.

 

[CassCats6 3]

Interestingly, there is a prepared snake food in the works, it's kinda like a sausage that contains all of the nutrients most mice eating snakes would require. However, it's not commercially available on a wide scale yet because it literally was just made.

They're quite behind with a lot of the prepared reptile foods.

Guaranteed this Muppet face wouldn't touch the prepared food with a ten foot pole

This girl though loves her Pangea food most, she was a rescue from a family member who told us she was picky and wouldn't eat anything but cut up mangos. Turned out not providing her the correct lighting and heating to be able to metabolize her food made her that way. Now I struggle to keep her from eating her isopod cleaning crew

But Pangea is fairly new in the long run. Repashy is another that makes food for them as well, though Repashy is good, Pangea is supposed to be the most balanced diet for her particular species. The prepared foods available to reptiles are limited and not versatile towards *all* species. Fish foods that are prepared tend to be "one size fits all" for specific groups of fish, which makes it more convenient for all levels of fish keepers.

 

[Rusty_Shackleford29 145]

Interestingly, there is a prepared snake food in the works, it's kinda like a sausage that contains all of the nutrients most mice eating snakes would require. However, it's not commercially available on a wide scale yet because it literally was just made.

It may be new in Europe, snake sausages have been on the market for years here in the U.S.
Hmm where would you keep them? I imagine that's not a mistake you want to make while fixing breakfast.

 

[CassCats6 3]

It may be new in Europe, snake sausages have been on the market for years here in the U.S.
Hmm where would you keep them? I imagine that's not a mistake you want to make while fixing breakfast.

I'm in Canada and they're not available here yet. They're pretty new.

Definitely freezer or fridge and pray you don't mix them up with breakfast doubt they'd be that tasty for us

 

[Ed Pursell9 14]

Presently have three Fire Belly Toads, tank with waterfall, stones and Java Moss.. Probably going on 8 years, Cricket eaters and Wax worms for a treat. Had an Iguana (Savana) for appx. 10 years in a 55 gallon enclosure, she passed away eventually… Kind of miss the Iguana but got enough with my Lab, the toads, and my fish tank…
Ed