RE: Feeding

[RDotta7777@aol.com]

In a message dated Mon, 12 Jun 2000 10:52:07 AM Eastern Daylight Time, "Max Gallade" <m.gallade@jdneuhaus.com> writes:

<< I stopped feeding Bloodworms.IMHO they are hard to digest for DC's.I lost
some juvenile Apistos and especialy some Dicrossus species, by feeding
Bloodworms.
The symptoms where always the same:The bellies started to get swollen,loss
of appetite,fish stayed on the bottom.The last victim  was a D.filamentosus
after my wife accidentally fed bloodworms,that proved my suspicion.I could
be wrong,but I have not lost a fish since I stopped feeding Bloodworms.
I use frozen daphnia as a staple,occasional BBS,decapsuled BBS,Spirulina and
Omega three enriched BS,white mosquito larvae and Flakes.I also have some
Cyclop -eeze which I will try on my next batch of fry.
I just started an experimental colony of red wigglers but haven't fed them
to my fish yet.
I'm going to wait till they multiply enough to keep the colony going.
Max

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-apisto@admin.listbox.com
> [mailto:owner-apisto@admin.listbox.com]On Behalf Of Frauley/Elson
> Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2000 11:05 AM
> To: apisto@majordomo.pobox.com
> Subject: Re: Feeding
>
>
> Christopher R Brightwell wrote:
> >
> > I was wondering what people are feeding their apistos.  I have
> a group of
> > eight in a heavily planted 75 and they don't seem interested in brine
> > shrimp at all.
> > TIA
> > Chris
>
> I feed mine frozen bloodworms as a staple, supplemented by live
> whiteworms, very occasional chopped earthworms or ant larvae and a fair
> bit of good old-fashioned flake (staple, plankton flake and brine shrimp
> flake in rotation).
> Freshly freeswimming fry get some live bbs, lots of decapsulated and
> some crushed flake. Since I shifted to 'decap.' in the mornings, growth
> rates haven't slowed, and I've brought njisseni, taeniata, sp rotpunkt,
> macmasteri and sp vielfleck to young adulthood in fair numbers.
> -Gary
>
>

Hi all,

This is just a theory, but....

I had a brood of discus and they were growing up fine on bbs and some bloodworm in a community tank.  As the discus got a little older, I thought that they should be given more food.   Not wanting to feed the rest of the tank to the same extent as the discus, I put in feeding cones.  The discus could suck out the bloodworm and most of the other cichlids would just eat what fell to the bottom of the tank.  After two days of this, 5 of the 10 discus died suddenly with no symptoms except an extended stomach area.  I quit feeding the bloodworms and posted to the discus list.  There I found that it was known that juvenile discus would overly gorge themselves on bloodworm, leaving a large portion of undigested bloodworm in their stomachs and literally choking off the circularatory system.  When they were autopsied, there was large amounts of whole undigested bloodworm in the gut.  Since that time I have read TFH and found that Jack Wattley has stopped feeding bloodworm to juvenile d!
iscus as they will eat themselves to death.  

However, I now continue to feed bloodworm to juvenile discus, but not in feeding cones and I watch how much bloodworm that I drop at one time, making sure that other fish can get to it easily (i.e. evenly spread across the tank).  That way the discus can't get too much without competing for it.  

I suspect that this may be true for other juvenile cichlids also.  I still use bloodworm, but I try to control the amount more than I thought necessary.  It is always said that fish won't eat more than they need.  I now disagree with this theory.  

Rich D'Ottavio





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