feeder tank

[spaghetti81]

Ok. So im new to this and I bought an oscar. He eats a lot of minnows. I have an extra 20 gallon setup that I want to turn into a feeder tank. Is there any fish that is better for a feeder fish? Like grows faster produces sooner?. What do I need as far as decor?.. any help would be great?

 

[Abrams96]

"Minnow" is pretty generic. Seeing as their are hundreds of different species of varying sizes. Where are you getting them? Collecting them yourself, bait shop, LFS?

Here is my "minnow" tank. Though they are not feeders.

 

[tarpon]

Guppys reproduce really fast and give birth to live young so they will probably make good feeders. You'd need to feed them a high quality food and feed them right before feeding the guppies to the Oscar to impart as much nutrition as possible. You should really buy a nice pellet food to be the main source of your Oscars diet though. They're specially formulated with all kinds of nutrients the Oscar needs and are much healthier than feeding just minnows 24/7.

 

[spaghetti81]

I feed tje oscar blood worms and pellets. Lol. He is not picky .. also I guess thay shows how much I know about minnows. Lol. I have just been buying them from a large chain store. But have extra tanks and would like to start doingbit myself. I will get the tank set up. This info should give me a start. I guess I have to look into it more in depth as far as kind. Guppies sounds good. Do u have any websites or anything that might help so I can tell the difference between male and female?

 

[marty20]

Hey just giving my two cents as my Oscar has been with me for 2 years now. I also breed guppies for fun and I hate to burst your bubble but I think it would take you about 2 years to get your guppy population large enough to handle your Oscars intake. Also by that time your Oscar would have grown so much that guppies would not be enough food to keep him happy. I have let my culls grow up in a 20 gallon tank since I started breeding guppies and I think my Oscar could eat them all in a day haha. So unfortunately it would be impractical to breed your own fish to feed your Oscar... unless you bought a much larger tank and let them go wild which would be more expensive then just buying the feeders. You mentioned feeding the Oscar worms... mine loves them and as I treat ill give him one every now and then. One thing you could look into is building a worm farm for food for him. I have seen exanples of this on the internet but its been years since i have researched it. Be aware though that it could be possible for him to refuse anything other than worms if that's all you feed them for a period of time as they like them that much!

 

[spaghetti81]

Thanks for the two cents .. ot did get me looking some more. I have extra tanks so today I started tje process. Lol. I am going to try and use a little of everything. Altho I found your statement about the worms to ne true. Once he eats them he really doesnt like anything else. Lol. But if I don't give hime the worms he will eventually eat a fish or two. I thought it might be fun for my boys to do some guppies and platys. I took the guys word for it about the male and female platys cuz I couldnt tell them apart. Any help with that would be cool. I have to finish building my stand and then my 150 gallon tank will be the oscars new home

 

[marty20]

I would buy a bag of feeder guppies and watch them breed like crazy and every once in awhile you'll get a beautiful guppy out of those really ugly ones and if you selectively breed from that guppy you'll find you can replicate the genes pretty quickly, I was able to do it in 4 generations and eventually found a snakeskin gene in mine which im working on breeding out now. I actually used this little project for a research paper in college. But of course it makes it difficult to feed the little guys to your big Guy after you start doing it haha. But your kids might like to watch what colors can come out of the "ugly " feeder guppies. I don't know anything about platys though sorry lol.

 

[marty20]

The feeder guppies are really cheap for a lot of initial breeding guppies which helps your breeding stock numbers skyrocket!

 

[spaghetti81]

Sounds cool. I love trying that kind of stuff. As soon as my big tank is set up I will have 3 30 gallon tanks just for feeder fish and fun. Lol