The Puffer Forum

Nick wrote:if you breed your own livebearers under good conditions, they are a safe feeder fish option as well.

I was thinking about that sometime back but discovered that it is alot more cheaper and save me time to just buy feeders. The main reason why I am feeding my arrowhead feeders, because I am currently in the army and is at home only during the weekends. Getting my family to help feed him is too difficult as none of them have the patience to wave a piece of food in front of his face for extended period.

Perhaps see about using feeder crays? He'll be able to digest feeders fine, arrowheads eat fish, but make sure it's not goldfish - they're vitamin deficient and hardly digestible to anything. He'll also eventually have hole in the head for sure - I've worked at a pet store for over a year, and any piscivores that get feeders eventually get terrible hole in the head, the disease is rampant in the feeder supplies, but takes a couple years to reach visible symptoms and kill, so it's usually never even noticed in feeders themselves as their life cycle is so short.

Wow, the hole in head symptom in a puffer is a first time for me. Then I should really cut back on the feeder fishes. I am not using goldfishes anymore but I have to say the goldfish fatten up real fast. I am currently using feeder snakeheads and swordtails. Feeding my snakeheads market pawns and the swordtails blood worms. As for feeder cray, I tried that for about a month and my wallet started to hurt.

If you QT the feeders first, risk in minimized - you might considered dosing the feeders with metrodiazole when you get in a new batch to kill off some parasites, like hexima.

Erm...What can hexima do to my fish?