Re: NANFA-L-- Some questions on quarantine -medication /

Michael Lucas (psalm119.111-in-gmail.com)
Sun, 21 May 2006 15:36:22 -0400

Regarding the feeding question. I've tried using a tube from an old
undergravel filter to drop frozen foods to the bottom where darters and
suckers have a shot-in-it. It works best if done directly following a
feeding of flake or freeze-dried foods and if hidden behind some rocks and
going into a rock pile. But it still depends on the fish involved. With
Rainbow darters it helped as they are fairly aggressive feeders but when
most dace and shiners are involved they quickly figure out there's better
fare available and out compete any but the aggressive feeders. I've found
some darters like tesselated, banded and greensides just don't feed
aggressively enough to get enough without saturation feeding in most
community situations. In fact sometimes these species, in my experience are
so intimidated by the feeding frenzy they give up and don't even try after a
few nibbles. The suckers seem to do better then this group of darters but
feed too slowly to get a fair share.

Better community selection seems to be a good alternative. I've always
enjoyed the tesselated darters but in commmunity they seem to gradually
waste away but I've recently had better success by mixing with some young
Blackbanded Sunfish and swamp darters. With Blackbandeds I used to run into
problems with young ones if kept with Banded sunfish and Bluespot Sunnies so
the new mix is working well on both sides.

Mike Lucas
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