feeding my smallmouth

[balls]

just wondering if it is alright that i have all of my feeding fish in the tank where i have my smallmouth bass. there are about 20 "rosey reds" in the tank currently with my bass. i plan on keeping them in a smaller tank, but it is not ready to hold fish. should i keep them in a bowl till i get my smaller tank up to speed?
-andrew

[William]

Well it's always good to keep your feeders in another aquarium for a while to make sure that you don't bring any diseases to you smallmouth bass.

I would like to recommend you to try and give your fish more variation in their diet. Try and feed them earth worms, blood worms, mysis, or insects depending on what you have access to and where you live. A more varied diet is always better for your fish.

[William]

And congratulations on keeping a great fish.

[balls]

thanks, i just noticed today that he seems to be opening and closing his mouth slightly and his gills are opening and closing at the same time at a steady rate. i never noticed this before, is this behavior normal? it might be from stress?

i transferred him from a small tank to a larger tank last night. the larger tank had only been cycling for 2 days, with the 20 rosey reds. i would have waited longer, but i checked the water in the small tank. it had unsafe levels of nitrate 160ppm (mg/L), nitrite 3.0ppm (mg/L) and a low pH level around 6.2 maybe lower. all of the tests in the larger tank looked well, pH at 7.0.

i should not have transferred him so soon, but it was either another night in the small tank with unsafe water readings, or the stress from a change in pH.

-andrew

[William]

It sounds reasonable that what you describe can be a symptom of stress.

Have you checked the water values in the new tank?
Did you give the fish time to adjust to the new water?

Adding an air pump might be good for a few days if you have one or raising the air levels if you allready use one. You should do fine anyway but it might be beneficial.

[balls]

its been about 24hours now since hes been in the new tank. he is looking a little better than when he first went in, so iam thinking it might be alright.

back to the topic of food...

i tried hikari medium sized cichlid staple floating pellets and he doesnt seem to like going to the surface for food. i also tried some wardley sinking shrimp pellets, and those just make the tank really dirty. i guess my only option is for live feed?

-il try earth worms, iam sure he'll like that
-do you recommend freeze dried bloodworms? or live ones?
-is mysis like ghost shrimp? i tried that and he had trouble catching them...
-any recommendations on insects? there are TONS of crickets that are around my yard, i am not sure how i would get them to sink though...

[William]

You might be able to get him to accept pellets and such with a little training. You could also try to put a bit of fish meat or shrimp on a stick and move it around a little in the water to trigger the hunter in your fish. Once they learn that the fish/shrimp is food you will be able to stop using to stick and just put the food in the tank to feed you bass.

You could try frozen blood worms. I have found that most fish accept them.

Yes, mysis is like ghost shrimp but free swimming. You might keep some feeder shrimp in your tank to se if he gets better on catching them.

I can't recommend any particular species since. Why don't you try crickets? The fact that they move might trigger the bass to take food at the surface even if it normally doesn't surface for food. I recommend that you try this a few times before giving up since it sometimes takes fish some time to figure out that something new is food. You can leave the cricket floating for a while whit out having to worry about the water quality. But remove it if it dies and don’t leave it in to long. If the fish hasn’t eaten it after 15 minutes it most likely won’t eat it that day.

[knifefan]

How big is your smallie? Most game fish like small mouth and large mouth bass are caught in the wild and for that reason might not take to pellets so as william said try crickets or wax worms or even night crawlers as they are live food that has more nutrition and less likely to carry disease.

[tyler]

i fish smallies and they tend to like goldfish very well

[LeroyBass]

I've had my Largemouth named Leroy since April 1st. He started out around 5 inches in a 35 Gallon Hex Tank. He's since moved up to a 75 Acrylic and he is now about 15 inches in length and weighing around 2 pounds. I used to feed him Sandworms, earthworms, crickets, hoppers and any type of smaller fish.
Since he moved into the bigger tank he seems to care less about the worms and other insects. Fish are his main diet now mixed in with Crayfish and Green Crabs. The Smallie should take well to any type of smaller feeder fish, Killies or some type of shad would be best. For a special treat try giving him some Crayfish. They may cost from 5-10 dollars each but don't you like Lobster every once in a while? heh

[newt0524]

hey guys,
\
any pics of the small or the largemouth?

i de love to keep a largemouth, but he wouldn't do to well in my tank set up.

newt

[jeffs99dime]

this thread is from 2005!!!

[boston]

try goldfish tyler said they like them and i know they do because thats what i used to feed mine,till it got about 13 inches and i realeased it in the lake.