Keeping feeder tuffies healthy?

[Polar_Bus]

Hey all,
I am really struggling keeping Tuffies alive in my 10 gal feeder tank. I seem to loose about 1-2 fish a day. I have tried many different water types with NO luck. My LFS tells me frequent feeder fish loss is normal? Thanks for your thoughts,
Rich

 

[hc8719]

its normal for diseased and malnurished lfs feeder fish, but home grown feeders shouldnt be sickly or dying.

try giving them food, if they are really so sickly, and feeding 2 times daily doesnt help, dont feed them to your fish

 

[DepotFish]

Look at how they are kept and what exactly they are. They come from overstocked tanks, rarely cycled, rarely get water changes, rarely get treatment for disease. The fish themselves are breeder rejects or are from farms that conjur up millions of fish for the feeder industry. The likelyhood of them staying alive in your own feeder tanks is slim. I'm also asuming you are massively overstocked in the feeder tank and have a large amount of ammonia. Feeder fish provide little nutritional value and are very likely to introduce disease to your main tanks and to whatever fish is eating them. Not worth it if you ask me.

 

[Polar_Bus]

Thanks for the input guys!

 

[severum mama]

If you really want to use feeder fish, I would suggest getting a couple of livebearers and breeding them yourself. Much safer IMO.

 

[exodus]

I work at my local LFS. We sell goldfish and tuffies as feeders. Now, the goldfish stay alive with no problem, we lose maybe 10 a week out of 500. But tuffies on the other hand, we lose handfuls every day. We try to keep the tanks healthy, water changes every day, both tanks are cycled and overfiltered, but the tuffies just dont want to live.

I highly suggest some livebearers as recommended above. I also have a breeding pair of convict cichlids and I feed the fry to my other fish in my 55 before they hit full maturity. And they breed like CRAZY, are great parents and mine usually lay 75-100 eggs at a time. If I take all their fry away, within a week there's usually another clutch of eggs around.

 

[Burks]

Just another experience with feeders. I tried to keep feeder guppies (love the wild strain male look) and out of 30, only two females have survived.

They aren't meant to LIVE in your tank but to be eaten.

 

[Toirtis]

Firstly, a 10 is too small for more than a dozen, secondly, you want clean, cool (68ºF-74ºF) water with good aeration and some current....at the shop, ours are kept in a huge stock tub with daily 50% water changes and tons of aeration, and we lose <5%.