Breeding Feeder animals

[Gordonious]

I am trying to find a way to feed my frog fish with out having to constantly have marine shrimp shipped to me from across the country. (As far as I can tell there isn’t a reliable safe local source of feeders in my area.<A HREF=”http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=1114141”>Related thread</A>) I considered trying to find a feeder shrimp to culture since I am already attempting to culture two ornamental shrimps, but the only marine feeder shrimp I have found online I've been told are almost impossible to culture in the home.

I am going to try to get a couple breeding mollies and guppies, but they will probably be in a brackish system and I am not sure if they are the healthiest staple.

What if I used cardinal fish or some other marine fish that are not impossible to culture? Anyone know if Juvenile cardinal shrimp would be nutritionally sound as a staple?

Jon

 

[FMarini]

Jon-
we'll not talk ethics here okay, just facts
yes baby cardinalfish would work fine. However you'll need a bunch of brood stock to keep up. I assume your talking banggais since they are the only mouthbrooder cardinal that holds the fry. they mate 1/month and make 25 babies, it will take about 3 months for the fry to be sufficently big enough to act as food. So to act as food (assuming they eat 2-3 fish every other day) you'll need 30 fish/month
Your prolly better off breeding clownfish and raising the fry as food instead.

However you can do what 90% of all landlocked fish keepwers do and that it to wean the frogfish onto dead prepared marine fish. Thats way the grocery store becomes your food source

 

[illcssd]

it shouldn't been to hard to wean your frogfish off live food. Every one i have ever kept i have been able to get it off live food and eating silversides or krill within a month. Just try and make the silversides look live, wiggle them around and such. It will take some patience but its well worth it in the long run.

 

[Gordonious]

All it eats currently is silver sides. I was told they were only good as a treat and shouldn't be a staple.

 

[FMarini]

no silversides are fine, they are a SW minnow.
However i would mix them w/ things like small gulf shrimp, pieces of SW fish flesh, etc. A varied diet should help alot