feeder fish?

[Ben]

I have read a lot of posts that many discus are eating their cardinal tetras or neons, so i thought would it be feasible to feed cheap guppy feeders (or other livebearers) to discus?
Or has this already been done? It’s a different source of live food, and guppies are easily bred.

What are our thoughts?

cheers,

[anti-generic]

i once had breeding guppies in the same tank as my discus
but not much fry was eaten becuase many of then grew to maturity. maybe my discus is just too lazy to hunt.

:(

[leanne31]

I have platys in my tank they have babies about once a month I also think it gives my discus some excitement to as the babies are quite fast and the discus love to chase them it only lasts a day though and they're all eaten.

Leanne

[Dave76]

I read somewhere that using live feeders can confuse the Discus come breeding time at wriggler stage - they see their own wrigglers as food.

Regards

Dave

[Merrilyn]

Difficult to know which way to go on this one. In the Amazon, discus are often found in the same water as cardinal tetras, so it would be safe to assume that small fish make up part of their diet.

If you are breeding your own guppies in ideal conditions, the fry would be clean and safe to feed to discus, but I wouldn't risk buying pet shop guppies to feed straight to your fish.

I think my concern would be that they get used to eating small fry in their tank, and that habit may carry over to eating their own fry.

Anyone else tried this?

[goldenpigeon]

i have on many occasions thought of feeding guppie fry to my discus. i used to breed guppies for a while there and whenever they had babies i would feed the struglers ect to my discus. first i made sure they were disease free though. all the discus i had at this time were of a young age so i dont think it did them any harm. but i would definetly stop feeding fry by about 5 months max. i havnt come across problems but it is definetly not worth the risk. some discus may be fine and good parents but i have always found that the most beutiful and expensive discus you have will turn out to be a mass egg eater or have some other problem with wanting to fill its bellie! :twisted:

David :cry: :cry: :cry:

[Merrilyn]

Oh the joys of breeding discus :x For me it's always the most magnificent spunky looking male who has no clue when it comes to breeding :roll:

[leanne31]

What about live brime shrimp then there still small and swim in the water too :?:

Leanne

[Merrilyn]

And mossie wrigglers can certainly look like their own wrigglers too. Yet they would be a part of a natural diet anyway. Guess we're going to have to do some more research on this.

[goldenpigeon]

too true ladyred! i have 1 at the moment hes the nicest looking most bossy fish i have and yet he eats his eggs and chases every other fish in the tank around

David