# Why I don't feed goldfish feeders anymore



## boxer (Sep 11, 2003)

Well I haven't been to this site in a while but now that I have owned piranhas for over 7months, I have a little experience with piranhas now. Well, live fish as food for piranhas has usually been cool to watch as they struggle to escape a piranhas grasp. I used to feed my piranhas feeders daily with floating pellets. Well now I have changed my view on feeders. Everyone knows they are a disease risk. All goldfish do is sh*t and eat each other's sh*t. They feed on each other and aren't the cleanest fish. The other day, I bought 24 feeders and put them in my feeder tank. The next night, the tank is all cloudy gray and all are dead or dying. Now my room smells worse than imagineable and I see that this could of gone into my piranhas' stomache. Imagine the risk I would be taking. 1 piranha gets sick and the others notice the weakness and pounce upon it. That would be devastating. Well now I look into the spilo tank and remember the times before when I would see the goldfish alive cut in half by my spilo dying slowly or when the goldfish in my pygo tank would congregate at the top trying to hide under the filter. It is just plain cruel! I just wanted to share that I changed my view. I will still feed them live food on occasion but its now hikari pellets and other non live food.


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## hughie (Sep 7, 2003)

I only feed enough live fish for them to eat. So there isnt any leftovers.

If you put too many in there you are bound to have half eaten fish and clouldy water.


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## boxer (Sep 11, 2003)

I don't think you understood my post. The feeder tank was cloudy, not my piranhas tanks. My spilo slices its 1 feeder and leaves it to die slowly. Sorry if I wasn't specific


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## Guest (May 3, 2004)

I would say 99% of the time I feed cut meat or worms to my Spilo. The other 1% of time I feed creek chub or shiners from a local stream.

I understand and fully accept the risk of transferring disease and parasites by doing this. I do it because I am in awe of how piranhas attack and kill. If I couldn't watch my Spilo decimate a fish five times his size like he was carrying a razor blade, I wouldn't own the fish.


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## Genin (Feb 4, 2003)

Mine get feeders very very rarely. I feed them the goldfish because I like to keep their hunting instincts intact. When my fish are being lathargic and not really that interested in their food, I will go get them some live food and it kicks them right back into shape again. I think you need to feed their instincts once in a while, not just their bellies.

Joe


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## skool-of-death (Apr 25, 2004)

keep a seperate tank for feeders so you can monitor them for diseases, wait awhile before you feed them, this will cut down on the disease factor. Only feed what they will eat right away. dont let half eaten half dead goldfish swim around spilling blood for long.


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## Scottish_Piranha_Fan (Apr 12, 2004)

> The other day, I bought 24 feeders and put them in my feeder tank. The next night, the tank is all cloudy gray and all are dead or dying.


Looks like you have a tank polution problem. By the sounds of it you may have been feeding them flaked food? As when i started keeping (normal) tropical fish years ago, one of my first problems was putting to many in a small tank, and putting too much falked food in there which turned the water all cloudy and the fish were nearly all dead within a day.


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## Guest (May 4, 2004)

anonymous9173 said:


> > The other day, I bought 24 feeders and put them in my feeder tank. The next night, the tank is all cloudy gray and all are dead or dying.
> 
> 
> Looks like you have a tank polution problem. By the sounds of it you may have been feeding them flaked food? As when i started keeping (normal) tropical fish years ago, one of my first problems was putting to many in a small tank, and putting too much falked food in there which turned the water all cloudy and the fish were nearly all dead within a day.


 Right. 
In addition to that, instantly going from a few feeders in a tank to more than two dozen will sometimes cause a fatal ammonia spike. It takes a while for the beneficial bacteria population to increase enough to meet this larger ammonia-load.


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## rbp75 (May 2, 2004)

I agree with bullsnake, if you put a large number of fish into a tank all at once there will be an ammonia spike which is most likely what caused the deaths. When I had red eared sliders I would buy dozenes of feeder guppies and put them in a feeder tank, every day there would be several dead ones until the number got down to a smaller amount and there would not be any more dead ones, and like skool-of-death said just monitor them for a while before feeding them or just freeze them prior to feeding them to kill any possible parisites assuming nutrition is a consern and not just the thrill of the kill.


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## LiLMic (Apr 14, 2004)

mayb its becuz u put 24 fish in there at a time they anit godzilla they dont got that appitie


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## Trimma194 (Mar 20, 2004)

stupid goldfishes have too many diseases


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## boxer (Sep 11, 2003)

english lilmic! do you speak it?

i have 2 feeder tanks. a 10gallon and a 5.5gallon feeder tank. the 10gallon has gravel and has been the main feeder tank for the whole time i owned piranhas. the 5.5 gallon which has no gravel and has been the feeder tank for a month was the 1 the feeders died overnight. it was most likely ammonia spike because the filter can handle only so much since there is no gravel to hold all the beneficial bacteria. i dont have gravel in the 5.5 because when scooping for feeders, its a pain to grab gravel with goldfish and transfer it into a tank with different gravel.


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## EZ_Ian (Feb 21, 2004)

I used to share the same viewpoint on feeders, disease ridden bastards that will kill my Ps.... But after thinking about it and talking to the owner of my LFS, I began feeding feeders again. This is why. First, in the wild... what are Piranha eating? Im pretty sure they go to the LFS and pick up a sack of hikari gold pellets, large if they are bigger Ps, but smaller pellets if the fish are smaller.... riiiight. Im pretty sure they are scavengers and prey upon those weaker than themselves. So why not feed them what they would normally be eating in the wild? I would be wrong about them eating smaller fish in the wild, but it seems to make sense since they eat feeders that we put in our tank, some sort of natural instinct. So since feeders arent a bad idea, heres how I make sure they are disease free and clean for eating. Have two tanks set up that are fully cycled and running. Two 10 gallon tanks should be fine unless you plan on keeping a whole f-in family of feeders. Anyway, two 10 gallon cycled tanks... have one of the tanks be the tank you place "fresh bought" feeders in, have that tank be loaded with salt to kill parasites and to kind of cleanse if you will, the newly purchased feeder fish. After the new fish are in the first tank for about a week and you notice nothing is wrong with them, then move them to the "clean" feeder tank, which will only house feeders that survived the "cleansing tank" this is a VERY easy way to make sure your feeders are clean and also a very important part of my piranhas diet. Now that you have clean feeders, you can "gutload" them 5 minutes before you feed them to your piranha. Feed your feeders high nutrient flakes or other foods that you want your piranha to have but ones that your piranha might not readily take. Since you feed the feeders less than 5 minutes before you feed them to the Ps, then the food is still in thier stomach and ends up in your piranhas stomach. OH SNAP! who would ahve thought that feeders ARE actually a GOOD thing for Ps? Honestly, it takes a little effort, but if you arent prepared to give your Ps time they need, then you need to sell them back to who you got them from or give them to someone who knows how to take care of fish.... feel free to PM me about this if you want, or if you want to sell Ps to someone who can take some time for em.

Ian

*edit* if the freshly bought feeders seem to have something wrong with them, dispose of them and get some more until they survive the first tank, then put them in your "good" feeder tank for feeding. enjoy


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