The Puffer Forum

really? I thought I read somwehere that you could re-freeze mussels....

The reason why I recommend switching to small smelt from the seafood dept of your grocer is because I think its both less risky and an easy switch to make for fish "trained" to take silversides. Smelt are a very popular food fish in public aquariums both for fish and for marine mammals. Although both silversides and smelt for sale in Michigan come from the coast, smelt are sold for human consumption and I assume would be treated with more care - but its always "buyer beware" with anything, so be careful.

There are some freshwater minnows (Cyprinidae) that look similar to silversides and I should stress that they are not recomended because they are often loaded with parasites.

Thanks for the tip!

Update:
Lionfish appears to have completely recovered, thank heavens! He's well loved as well as being a very large and beautiful specimen. I was quite upset about the anglers but I'd have been horrified if Turkeyfish had perished.

The Fisherman wrote:hmmmm, what about frozen mussles? if i thaw it out in hot water, feed as much to my puff as he can eat, then pop it back into the freezer again, to thaw it out again for the next feeding. is that OK? thats what i've been doing lol. without problems.

What I do is use a heavy, sharp knife to cleave off whatever portion I think my fish will eat while it's still frozen then quickly return the unused portion to the freezer. Or I just throw away any leftovers - not that I have many, I have a lot of hungry fish and inverts.

Turkeyfish???

Oh, it's what I call our lionfish. Turkeyfish is the less graceful common name for them. Lionfish sounds majestic and fierce and turkeyfish, well, doesn't. He's beautiful and he's my husband's favorite but he isn't the smartest fish, thus I use the less flattering name for him.