<<What do they eat?
>It took about a week to get the to eat regular but I feed them Hikari
> >micro pellets. They are naturally filter feeders and tend to collect
> >below the out fall of sewage treatment plants or in the case of the >ones
>I caught below the spillway of a very nutrient polluted lake. They >like
>water with a high bacterial count so they can filter the bacteria >out of
>the water but they also like a high oxygen content. Two things >that don't
>go together often. But at the bottom of the lake spillway >the tumbling
>water becomes concentrated with oxygen and phytoplankton >which results in
>ideal conditions for the shad.
I just prepared a couple of large gizzard shad for skeletonization this past
weekend, and was awed by the gill raker morphology. They do form an
amazingly efficient sieve, but I can't believe that they can filter bacteria
directly... although they DO have a black peritoneum and a very long gut,
which you typically find in herbivores like Campostoma or Dionda or
Acrocheilus.
The problem with gizzard shad in reservoirs is that up to 22 mm total length
they feed on protozoans and microcrustaceans, thus potentially competing
with larval gamefish for food, and they get big and deep-bodied, thus
avoiding predation from most indigenous piscivores. Adults apparently do not
visually feed, but just sieve zooplankton (both microcrustaceans and
phytoplankton).
Hopefully yours will keep on doing well, but if they stop feeding on pellets
for some reason, you might try augmenting the algae population in your
tank...
cheers,
Dave
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