Feeder Fish Treatment

[ExoJoe]

I was thinking about getting a small aquarium to store feeder fish in. Is anyone aware of a good type of fish to use. I was hoping to maybe use some sort of prolonged treatment before actually using them as feeders to destroy disease and parasites. Any Ideas. The fish would be as an occasional treat for my pacman frog and a primary food source for my garter snake.

[Bombina Bob]

Hello Exo joe, welcome to the forum You can use a 10 gallon tank for quarantine and make sure to have the aquarium running a week before you get the fish to promote the growth of beneficial bacteria. For the best feeders for frogs and garter snakes, you can use guppies, they may be a little more expensive but they are the easiest to breed, minnows can be an occassional treat but for garter snakes its a no go. Minnows contain thiaminase which destroys Thiamine B1 vitamin within the snakes, Over time the snake may die to malnutrition if fed too many minnows. For more info on garter care look on Garter Snake Forum - Garter Caresheet

[Mentat]

... I was hoping to maybe use some sort of prolonged treatment before actually using them as feeders to destroy disease and parasites. Any Ideas...

Hello and welcome to FF! Myself would start with a healthy stock (not from a feeder tank and with no visible diseases in shop tank). Guppies are small prolific breeders, mollies grow much bigger; but sometimes can be finicky, and Platies are in the middle of those two IRT size. As Ryan stated, for fish treats, using a 10G will suffice. However; if needing a large number of fish, recommend either a 20L or even a 30/40 breeder tank. The 20L & 40's are available in the quarterly Petco $1 a gallon sale. Keep a bare bottom, a hang on back power filter (like Hagen's Aqua Clear for their simplicity and no cartridges) and you are set.

Plastic bushy plants can help fry survive being eaten by adults. Or you could divide that tank in two, one side for feeders/adults, and the other side for raising fry, with the ready to give birth females in livebearers plastic traps.

IRT treatments, you could get your fish and let them acclimate for a few days; then treat them daily for a week with Melafix. On day 7; do a 25% water change and treat tank with a parasite med that will kill flukes. Repeat the parasite treatment weekly after water change for total of 4 weeks and you are done. Missing a treatment will ruin everything and will have to start 4 treatment schedule again. Once done; run carbon on filter for 48 hours and discard it. The meds will be gone and you can start raising healthy fish in it.

As long as you do not introduce new fish stock and take care of the water with 20-25% weekly water changes, all should be OK. Good luck !

[Tongue Flicker]

A good quarantine consisting of a tank with good aeration, filtration, bare bottom and conditioned water is usually suffice. I know in the US/UK area there's this product you put into the water to enhance the body slime of fish to increase its resistance and immunity

[ExoJoe]

Thank you guys for all of the advice. I will put it to use when I decide to start keeping my own feeders.

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[limnologist]

As a accomplished aquarist, I must say that you Need ,with a capital N, need to understand PH difference in aquarium water to be able to breed fish sufficiently. I have tried hundreds of times to breed livebearers to feed my snakes and frogs but they would never have many babies and the babies would never get very large. You need to make sure that the water is alkaline (PH of 7.0) for the fish to breed large scale. This is easily done if you keep limestone in the aquarium. Also, Keep the temperature in the 80's for quick breed and quick growth. Embrace algae, as long as it isnt blue-ish colored, keep bushy plants, feed mosquito larvea (leave a bucket of water outside) and occasionaly boil some lettuce leaves and put them in the tank (the fish are omnivores).

This goes for:

Guppies (Endler's Guppies included)
Platies
Mollys (thought they also like a little salt in their water)
Swordfish