Feeder Fish as food?

I've read that you can feed your axies feeder fish, as long as you keep them for a min of 30days to make sure they dont have any health problems they could pass to your axies. What if you breed your own feeder fish? Would Bata fish work? baby batas of course. I know they will fight too. Let me know what your answer is! Thanks

Yea if you breed your own fish I am sure you can bypass the quarantine period. I don't quarantine my feeder guppies as I get them from a friend and also from a tank that I have just set up to breed them.

I am not sure about batas (do you mean bettas? there are different spellings so not sure if we are referring to the same fish), I don't know enough about fish to give good advice in that area. The things to look for when picking fish as feeder food is to make sure they are not aggressive, that they can tolerate the same water conditions and temperatures as an axolotl, and that they are nutritious.

Yeah that's a good idea Sarah. I think i'll just skip the bettas - beta..whichever..lol. My axies arent big enough for feeder fish right now anyways. But it's an idea in the future. How do you breed breeder fish?

Well I breed guppies and you really don't need to do much in my experience other than put a male with a few females in a seperate tank. They breed like rabbits! I have only just started breeding them as one of my females meant for food ended up having two lots of babies. I figure seeing as she has lasted 5 months in my axolotl tank and in that time managed to get pregnant and birth successfully twice in that time, she deserves her own tank. So now I am putting her and some babies in another tank and getting a male off a friend.

oh i see. So, if i went to the pet shop to buy my first male and female groupie, how do i tell what's what? how could i tell if it's a male verse a female?

You're better off feeding your precious axolotl on a hearty portion of nightcrawlers every few days. They seem to be the optimum live food for them. They also do great on a diet consisting of only trout chow (available through commercial food fish farms).

shantsdude said:

oh i see. So, if i went to the pet shop to buy my first male and female groupie, how do i tell what's what? how could i tell if it's a male verse a female?

Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guppy

Males are going to have larger tails, a little smaller in the body and more colorful. You will want to get more females then males if you keep them in the same tank. males will endlessly harass females and if there is only one female he might stress her out enough to kill her.

It is also likely that when you buy female guppies they are already pregnant at the pet store. if your pet store keeps males and females together the females WILL be pregnant.

The pet store usually keeps "feeder guppies" in a seperate tank from "fancy guppies." These are the same fish. The only difference is the pet store tends to take better care of the fancy ones because they intend to sell them as pets and not food. Because of the quality of their in-store enviroment, feeder guppies are much more likely to have diseases that you can pass on to whatever you are feeding them to.

For this reason, if you are planning on breeding them yourself, you might as well buy a few fancy guppies. You will have more guppy fry then you know what to do with in a small amount of time. They are slightly more expensive, but have a much better chance of not infecting your tank with diseases.