Seafood Treats For My Convicts

[fry_lover]

Got myself a seafood mix as part of my dinner tonight (small prawns, mussels and squid rings). I'd always thought of things like mussels and prawns are for fish like Oscars and Arrowana's!!! But i chopped a few mussels and prawns up and my Convicts went made for them.

Then i just plopped a whole mussel (only about 1 inch big) into my Rio 180 mixed convict tank (biggest convict is only about 3 inch), and they went nuts for it, every fish in the tank chasing whichever fish had the mussel in its mouth, after about 10 minutes it was completely ravaged (the mussel)

My question is 3-fold

1. From a nutritional perspective, how often do you think i should treat my convicts and jade-eyes to this treat? Whats the maximum per week do you think?

2. Bio-load on filtration, is it true such food create extra stress on filtration? I am not talking about rotting food, but simply the food being digested and then released by the fish? I "perhaps ignorantly" think that all food is the same as long as it gets eaten and not left to rot???

3. Whats the most economical way to feed my fish such treats do you think? Things like Tesco value etc???

also, anything else (or better) you could recommend for small / medium size convicts, talking about sea-food stuff, i already have many, many different types of frozen foods

 

[SamUK]

my big tank (with the cons) gets a load of prawns everyday.



i find my oscar sulks otherwise cos all the other foods i buy are a bit small for him.


fed them cod once too and they seemed to like it.

 

[mr.dark-saint]

Some days my fish eat better than me . Clams and it's kin seemes to be enjoyed more than other tid bits in my tank (my African Lungfish loves raw devained and fat trimmed chicken livers). With bivalves I just open up the shell and tie a string to the other so my dainty fingers don't get wet while retrieving the shells . Crabs are a bit more hands on since one has to make it accessable to the fish so you'll need to shell raw crab parts and this is more difficult than cooked (pair of scissors and chop sticks are real handy here ). Now Crayfish I just remove the pichers and let them have a good ol' game of "Hide and Seek" (I'll hear the crunching when the loser is caught).

I don't think if you have a fully opperational filter system it wouldn't add much bio-load (but chicken livers are messy). Then again when the Lungfish drops that load it is large (imagine a vienna sausage) and I go by the "If you can fish it out then fish it out". No sense letting that float around in the currents .

I'd toss a few in the freezer just for those weekly or when I remember them under a mountain of other forgotten "mystery packs" . I'd use them as treats or supplements since it'll get expensive after a while.