# Free Food For Your Piranhas



## HGI (Oct 27, 2009)

So, I was down to about 2 weeks left of food for my piranha's and thought I'd stop by the local fresh fish store to see what they have and their prices. The kind lady working there asked if there was something I was looking for and I explained to her that I have piranhas and that they eat white meat and just happened to ask "Do you have any white meat trims or scraps that your going to throw away but nothing that's rotting?". She laughed and took me to the cooler in the back to show me a bin full of white meat and a bin full of red meat and said I could take all I wanted at no cost... I was rather shocked, the white meat bin was full of; snapper, halibut, cod, sole... and the list goes on... I touched and smelled the food and it wasn't slimy or smelly though some of the ends were starting to dry out from being exposed to the air. I grew up on Vancouver Island and I'm a cook by trade so handle a lot of fish in my life, so I can safely say I know my stuff about the local sea food. I asked her what the deal was with it all and she said they're only aloud to shelf it for 5 days then they have to toss it for health standards, but they keep all of it in the cooler till garbage day so it doesn't rot in the bin outside. She gave me a bag and told me to take as much as I wanted and to come back for more any time, so I grabbed a small/decent amount and brought it home.

I should of taken photos before I cut it up cause seriously they were all good looking fillets that I would have no problem eating myself, kept I grown sick of sea food.

Here's the plate after I cut it into chunks, and bagging them into week portions.... ended up being 14weeks of "FREE" food for the fish.


















What I'm saying is any of you that live near the coast, east or west, you should consider stopping buy your local fresh fish market and just explain to them.

I'm pretty excited that I have a good source of fresh free sea food.


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## CuzIsaidSo (Oct 13, 2009)

Great info...There's fish markets everywhere where I live I'm gonna look into this


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## lo4life (Aug 12, 2008)

Good find man... Wish I had fish markets where I am at..


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## Wide_Eyed_Wanderer (Aug 22, 2006)

This is sweet HGI. All of you guys with huge tanks and with huge shoals should really check this out, you'll be able to feed as many fish for free now, if you can find a place.


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## Blackdude (Feb 28, 2003)

At my place they only have red meat leftover... :/


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## Ægir (Jan 21, 2006)

Also, thought i might add a friend of mine worked at a Steakhouse that served some seafood and fish. They would always be trimming down salmon fillets and throwing it away, and deformed or small shrimp too. I talked to his boss, and asked if they could keep the scraps for me and just throw them in the freezer.

In about 2 months my freezer was full of shrimp and salmon... Which was also great snacks for me


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## Piranha Dan (Nov 11, 2007)

Sweet deal. Fresh tilapia is real cheap (I pay about a dollar a fillet) but free is even better.


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## arok3000 (Nov 28, 2009)

Where I'm from, tilapia is actually quite costly compared to sole and cod, etc.
So I usually bought my P's Sole and I eat about 3/4 of a bag and they had the other quarter.
At $24 bucks a bag for about 30 prepackaged filets though, it was getting costly, especially as these guys seem to consume more and more.

So passing a fish market in a strip mall that is usually out of the way for me, I remembered this post and asked them pretty much the same thing.
I left with just under 15 pounds of halibut cuttings for free.
Bonus: they served a really nice Boston clam chowder I bought for lunch also.

Good idea HGI! I never would have thought to stop in had you never posted this.


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## HGI (Oct 27, 2009)

Wicked! glad it worked out for you, and ya sea food can be pricey in Alberta.... Say maybe we could set up a trade seafood for stakes? I wont eat sea food anymore unless it's tuna/ling cod or prawns.

Nothing is better than Free 

Last year I was living in a small village(Ucluelet BC)for 5 years and the closest pet store was 1.5hour drive away through the mountains at the next town. I had a corn snake at the time and it was a bastard driving to the pet store once a week just to pick up one mouse. I was working at a restaurant that was right on the beach so it's quite obvious that they'd have rats/mice in the building, so I took out all of the snap-traps and replaced them with 2 live traps, one in the kitchen and one at the bar. Needless to say my snake was never starving and I saved a lot of money on gas


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## RedSoxfan (Apr 7, 2010)

Thanks for the great info,im headed to the fish store right now!!!!!


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## HGI (Oct 27, 2009)

Just wanted to bump this thread and see if it could get a move to the "Saved Topics" would provide good info to lots.


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## Parsa (Nov 12, 2008)

i agree


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## SandNukka15 (Nov 16, 2010)

yea thanks for the tip talapia, shrimp or whatnot isnt exactly the cheapest!!!!


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## Inflade (Mar 24, 2006)

When I had my 13 pygos this is how I kept my fish keeping cost down. You would be surprised , you don’t necessarily need to go to the market. Any grocery store with a seafood counter trims the fish they bring in. mind you I never got it FREE but I could get a 5 lbs bag of scraps for about 3 dollars. Never hurts to ask!


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## Piranha-Freak101 (Dec 8, 2010)

AWSOME


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