rosy red minnows aka "feeder fish"

fazt998cc · 12-13-2006, 12:47 PM

hello all i'm new to the hobby as well as to this site... rosy red minnows aka "feeder fish" has anybody here tried/trying to breed them in your tank?

bigsloe · 12-16-2006, 12:59 PM

why would you want to breed those if you breed rosey reds you might as well just go buy a pet rat instead there are too many fish out there to breed rosey reds dude i hate to sound like a jerk but cmon rosey reds i feel sick to my stomach

fazt998cc · 12-16-2006, 01:17 PM

my purpose of breeding them is to feed them to my regular fish which are : pacus, oscars, kenyis... i did some research & the best & only way to find out how healthy the feeder fish will be is to breed your own but thanks anywayz....

gm333 · 12-16-2006, 06:26 PM

Quote:

why would you want to breed those if you breed rosey reds you might as well just go buy a pet rat instead there are too many fish out there to breed rosey reds dude i hate to sound like a jerk but cmon rosey reds i feel sick to my stomach

I have a pet rat. They are definitly better than gerbils and hampsters.

Andyoybna · 12-17-2006, 01:55 PM

in all honesty i think they would breed way too slowly for it to be economical..... you would need many, many, many breeding pairs, or groups, plus you would need adults, which means raising them for months.... it would probably take you about 6 months or more to get your first fry, and how many are you gonna get? like 50 at most... plus you have to wait for those to get to a decent size in order to feed your larger fish

Tommy Gun · 12-17-2006, 02:58 PM

Fazt998cc,

I agree, it would take too long to breed them and I am speaking from experince here as I tried to do the same for feeder fish for my saltwater fish I had a few months ago. I set up three 10 gallon tanks, one with six large rosy reds, for breeding, and two for quaranteen and 'safe' fish for me to feed. It was a mess!

I think you may have better success with breeding guppies or even mollies. However, there are better alternatices to live foods on a long term basis, but I know that it is recomended to feed live fish once in a while. In that case, I think it is easier and more economical to just set up two 10 gallon tanks for quaranteening rosy reds. I say two because then if one tank has a problem, you hopefully can fall back on the other tank. Breeding guppies is pretty easy, but it may take some time to get them started. However, once you have one batch of fry, they seem to speed up so fast that it almost becomes out of control!

By the way, welcome to the forum!

fazt998cc · 12-18-2006, 11:31 AM

thanks for all your info i'll try guppies and mollies...

Tommy Gun · 12-18-2006, 06:15 PM

In my opinion, for what ever it is worth, I would go with guppies. I read that using colorful fish as feeders can have adverse effects on the fish that eat it. The information was not 100% in if this was a very long term issue, meaning it took a lot of time for this to occur, or short term, but if I remember right, it was a liver problem that came from not being able to remove the chemical that was the actual color in the scales. I grew out a couple of feeder guppies pretty fast in the past so I cant see why you wouldnt be able to breed them relatively quickly.

mayastarocker · 12-28-2006, 09:16 PM

I would rather go with breeding guppies or mollies because they are easier to breed than rosie reds. Besides, they can have diseases and you don't want that.

BJP · 12-28-2006, 09:54 PM

Rosie reds make great crappie bait if you like to fish. The hard part in my area is finding healthy ones. I thought about breeding them in my lower pond just to have some on hand all the time. I found an article online about it and had plenty of PVC pipe to make spawning caves but eventually decided the frogs and plants could have the pond.

Since rodents already came up, white mice make a pretty good bass bait. Just don't try it in an aquarium with a 7 pound bass. That was a mess. Water everywhere.