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How much over-fed is OVER-fed ? - Young Minnows


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#1 JackieFisher

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Posted 13 October 2018 - 01:20 PM

Howdy folks,
 
I have a few 1-inch fathead/chub/dace juveniles, and a 2-inch white sucker juvenile. The sucker is a leisurely diner and the minnows have OCD with food. They will fill up looking like pregnant guppies and they will eat more. Meanwhile the sucker's barely eaten.
 
  I am in a hurry to grow my sucker so he can be transferred to be with larger fish, and I keep changing water and cleaning the tank. So my question is : can I saturate the minnows with food like this, so the sucker gets a full meal from leftovers? IE will the minnows suffer in health from eating this much everyday? (assuming tank water is good)
 
I hope some of you have experience raising these hungry mouthed minnows. I am keeping them too so they need to have good health as well.
 
Thanks!


#2 Michael Wolfe

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Posted 13 October 2018 - 01:57 PM

Watford sinking shrimp pellets

They are too hard for the minnows. But they will dissolve and the sucker will be able to vacuum them up.

Pellets in first, then flakes to pull all the minnows to the top.

This has worked fir me with jumprock.
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#3 JackieFisher

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Posted 13 October 2018 - 02:30 PM

Thanks for the suggestion. Since I don t have the sinking type yet, I grind some flake down and hold it btw my fingers and deliver it right to the bottom of the tank by hand, and place some flake decoy on the surface. But the minnows finish the floating ones and quickly figure out there's more at the bottom. Their mouth seem to open wider and can eat bigger chunks than the sucker can!



#4 JasonL

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Posted 13 October 2018 - 04:15 PM

Shrimp pellets have worked for me as well. Having a fine substrate such as sand won't hurt either.

#5 JasonL

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Posted 13 October 2018 - 04:15 PM

Shrimp pellets have worked for me as well. Having a fine substrate such as sand won't hurt either.

#6 littlen

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Posted 15 October 2018 - 06:56 AM

Sometimes native fish keepers have a hard time keeping suckers for the very same reason you described.  Eventually they wither away from lack of nutrition.  The suckers only feed off the bottom, and aren't aggressive feeders.  On top of that, they browse, or better said--sift through soft substrate all day long finding benthic inverts and organics to to munch on.  In the wild, they have very little competition from shiners with this feeding strategy.

So to beat the dead horse, sinking pellets.  And there really isn't any way to keep the minnows from getting big bellies as long as you feed them items they can fit into their mouths.  That is the nature of the beast.  Another idea is to keep your substrate bed loaded with blackworms.  They'll live until found and eaten by the sucker.  And, will generally be out of reach of the minnows.

 


Nick L.

#7 Fleendar the Magnificent

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Posted 18 November 2018 - 09:11 PM

Minnows are gluttonous pigs and in my experience, like goldfish/carp of which they are kin to, will eat and eat and eat if given the opportunity. In my tank I have an aggressive WBN dace, 3 stonerollers, 15 various darters, 2 green sunfish, a stonecat madtom I named Zombie and 4 crayfish. I distract the minnows with blood worms at the top while using a long bamboo stick to get blood worms and Mysis shrimp down to the bottom for the rest. I cannot get any of the fish aside from the green sunfish to eat flake food. I suppose that if I withheld food for long enough and used only flake I'd get the minnows at least on flake. But for now they eat the shrimp and blood worms. However, you DO have to make extra effort to get food down to the bottom because the little pigs will eat all of it before the darters get any.

I think that my next endeavor is brine shrimp. I have the setup to grow them, just need to get it going.



#8 Suzanne

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Posted 20 November 2018 - 08:47 AM

My minnow is also a glutton! It will grab anything that fits in its mouth and even after it's stomach is full it will hold more food in its mouth, occasionally spitting it out and then grabbing it again! I assume it has to spit it out briefly to breathe? My baby green sunfish does the same thing. Thankfully they both only eat live or frozen food and the tiny pellets and flakes can sink to the bottom for the tadpole to eat.
If my fish ever decide pellets and flakes do tast good to eat I plan to make a low shelf-like hide that the tadpole can fit under and feed directly under that (by hand I guess) in hopes the fish won't see it long enough for the tadpole to eat.
All the best Experts were Beginners who didn't give up.

#9 Fleendar the Magnificent

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Posted 21 November 2018 - 07:12 PM

Minnows will continue to eat as long as they can comfortably do so. After awhile, my minnows stop for a bit, however, they eat a LOT. My daughter has goldfish in another tank and those fish just eat forever if you keep feeding them. As for spitting the food out, my minnows do it too from time to time. Might be to breathe, but possibly they want to eat more and decide not to. Hard to say what goes through their little minds, but they ARE ravenous pigs. Especially creek chubs. In the past I've had them eat whole small feeder goldfish.

 

We caught a bullfrog tadpole late in the summer this year, but unfortunately it didn't make it.






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