Feeding Live
 

Thought I would pick Canreef's brain on a discussion that I was having with Jdigital. Is it appropriate or ethical to feed live food to animals in your possession? For example:

Feeding harlequin shrimp live starfish
Feeding large preds (Groupers, Triggers, Puffers...) live fish/ live inverts
Feeding Mantis Shrimp live fish/ inverts

Any insight would be appreciated.
Levi
(Looks like my Poll didn't work :sad:Oh well, should make for a good discussion though)

Eat or be eaten!

i think it's fine. that's what happens in nature.
also if you really went down to the knitty gritty, your always feeding live to your animals. copepods eat algae and detritus, fish eat copepods, fish eat fish, ect.

That is kind of how the food chain works. I personally think it is better to feed your critters live foods. I equate the processed foods to TV dinners, they will fill the void but that is about all they are good for.

Why should our tanks be any different than what happens in the ocean? I used to feed my pythons live baby mice. I used to feed my tarantula live crickets. I have dropped live lobsters into pots of boiling water. I think it would be hypocritical on my part to have a problem feeding live food to my tank inhabitants. Just because it is a cute little clown doesn't make it less ethical to feed then other fish. A living creature is a living creature.

+1
I love watching my Tarantula eat live mice/ crickets. Throwing in freeze dried just isn't the same :neutral:.

zoaElite, our conversation was quite a bit more focused regarding this topic. And my "beef" wasn't the topic of 'live food' usage. I am upset at the reasoning Elite used for tossing 2 perfectly healthy clowns into a Mantis tank. You can damn well bet, that if those clowns hadn't been harassing other fish the LFS wouldn't have had a "reason" to toss them in the tank.

as i've said before, hat mantis will only accept live fish. if it wasn't them it would have been some other fish. mantises have to eat too.

Well hopefully you can afford clownfish as food when you take Grendal home.

Would you prefer that the fish be sold to some unsuspecting customer only to have it kill all of there fish? Atleast this way there was a reason behind feeding him live.
Levi

Wow, somebody needs a nap!

And its Grendel. As in Beowulf.... books.... classics... one of the best stories of all time...

As in some pretty cheesy electro-industrial. Come on Colby fess up!

I would agree that if they won't take prepared food there is little choice. I have problems with people obtaining creatures that they know will need live food.I have even greater issues with those that enjoy, or get a kick out, observing predation.

Hmmmm, is it available in "graphic novel" version? :lol:

Even if you feed it prepared food most of it used to be alive. Technically there is no difference if you fed it Mysis that was alive yesterday, or Clowns that are alive today. The only difference is OUR perception. If we were so worried about it then we wouldnt be in this hobby. The only way around it is if you were to feed it something that had died of natural causes while living in a natural enviroment.
I bet you had something for dinner tonight that was just recently alive.

were they tank bred or wild clowns?

Why would that matter?????? ^^^^^^^

:tape2::mrgreen:

Oh dude, you know it!

Geez man, you know them all.

I also find it difficult to understand why some hobbyists spend hundreds of dollars to in order to keep their tank inhabitants alive and think nothing of throwing in live critters to feed predators.

I share your thought that many of them simply enjoy observing predation. So sad!!

Don't see what the issue is here. I really enjoy observing all of my animals exhibit a healthy feeding response whether it is my Poison dart frogs searching for and eating fruit flies or my snakes eating live mice. The same applies to my fish. A healthy feeding response to live prey is something that I think is a good sign of health in captivity and is nothing to be sad about. These animals do not eat dead food in nature and why would I want to only provide dead frozen food to all my animals if I have the option to provide them with a live healthy alternative? I enjoy nature in all forms and predation is an integral part of that, a part that cannot be ignored. Each hobbiest can decide for themselves what they are comfortable with as we can provide a fairly full balanced diet to most of our inhabitants with prepared food. But if someone wants to supplement this with live feedings, I feel that this is their prerogative, and a great representation of the natural world in our little glass boxes. Isn't that what we are trying to recreate in the first place?
Sorry for the rant, just like my food fresh too! :wink:

:biggrin:^^^Well put.

Well they use the term ignorance is bliss for a reason :neutral:, predation happens we are predators, evolution is based on predation. Why on earth would you consider it "sad" to observe something so natural, something that occurs 24/7 all around us. After reading all of this I think that I might gouge my eyes out in fear of observing some malicious deer eating a poor defenseless piece of grass!

You can almost hear the vegetarians and vegans running this way lol. I ran in that pack for a couple years so I know =)

To each their own. I don't particularly enjoy watching that so If I'm able to keep my inhabitants healthy without live food I do that. I also wouldn't buy anything that absolutely had to have live food because it's a turn-off for me.

That doesn't mean I think it's wrong. We're keeping animals in little boxes against their will (if that can even apply here) so I don't think I can make that call. I just try my best to keep my pets happy. Sometimes that does mean hunting a crab with a nice long skewer :twised:

It all boils down to whether you are comfortable with what foods you choose to feed.

Our hedgehog loved live cricket's I thought it was gross but he thought they were very yummy.

And I had a tomatoe clown once and after it killed everything in my tank, yes I may have been tempted to feed it to something. However I am squimish and do not like it. But I think if you are okay with it then fine.:biggrin:

Gotta go my steak and eggs are done:redface:

predation
 

Life feeds on life, better get used to it!

People are predators too. It just 99.9% of us buy our food at the supermarket all pre killed and wrapped up nice in cellophane.

Predation is a fact of life, if you don't like it don't watch it. Maybe start a new movement for the banning of predation, that should keep you entertained for a while.

Meanwhile eat a carrot take a sip of V-8 juice and calm down, the herbal tea will be ready shortly.

live feeding
 

^^^ That made me laugh!

I don't have any problem of feeding live food to most captive animals. Crickets and crabs and even lobsters (into a pot of boiling water) are all invertebrates with no nerve endings in their exoskeletons and a very simple nervous system. Venomous snakes, tarantulas and pythons and constrictors all kill their prey quickly and humanely.

I don't know about live fish with a mantis though. They are slowly being chewed on and eaten alive until something vital is damaged. Seeing how nervous my Foxface, a clownfish being captured and eaten by a mantis would certainly be a stressful situation.

Couldn't you train it to eat crabs?

pinhead we have tried many many times, but as this is a spearer mantis it cant crack open crabs.
also the clown would not suffer, as the mantis jabs right through its prey usually killing almost instantly.

Think we could discuss this without the verbal shots at one another.

I think by the threads closed today, perhaps not, but maybe we could try. :lol:

Thanks a bunch. :D

As creatures with exoskeletons have sensation and can sense things they come in contact with they will have sense organs and/or nerve endings in that tissue.

all i have to say is why would any one buy a preditor if they didnt like to watch it feed. loved watching my snakes eat, and i actually fed them fish. and i had piranas and that was cool as well. in my opinion they only downside to live food is the COST. ITS CALLED THE LIFE CYCLE.... ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE. however in the wild it is usually only the sick and elderly that eaten first.

PS i had eggs for breaky ham for lunch and steak for dinner. with some veggies , which if you want to get into it are alive as well. lets not forget that things like feeder comets are BRED to be food and otherwise would not have even been born.

wild clowns are more nutritious?

to me it comes down to personal choice, and we are the gods of our salty domains.
i would feed agressive clownfish to a mantis, but not docile ones. That is because a territorial
problem fish is worth less to me. Also keep in mind that just putting the fish in the tank with the mantis does not
automatically mean it will be eaten, the mantis still has to capture the clown.

I think the point here is.....with the state of the oceans reefs coming under close examination and evaluation, can we afford to take a fish from the ocean to feed it to what 99% of reefers consider an un-wanted pest? A lot of time and effort goes into getting marine fish to our pet stores, whether they are wild caught or tank raised. It seems irresponsible to me to feed these fish to a hitch-hiker.....perhaps a better choice for food would be mollies....something that breeds like bunny rabbits and is readily available?

Since when is it natural to put a fish in a glass box with a predator?
Do you people condoning this also condone rooster fighting? Mongoose fighting?

How are you making this connection fishy? Rooster/ Dog/ Mongoose fighting are done in a very illegal setting focused on betting and the transfer of money. Me feeding my Trigger fish a live damsel is like Rooster fighting in which sense?
Well, Since when is it natural to put a fish in a glass box with out a predator? It isn't natural to put a fish in a box period, yet we still have this massive fresh/ salt water aquarium hobby going on around the world.

The original poster's intent was a poll about the ethics of feeding a predator live marine fish.
The feeding of a live starfish to a harlequin shrimp and a clownfish to a mantis were set at as examples.

I love watching a starfish fold itself around live rock as it searches for food. I love watching it's tiny suckers move the starfish up the glass in my aquarium.
I don't understand a hobbyist getting their rocks off watching a harlequin shrimp tearing it apart live.

I love watching a clownfish doing their waddle like swim, watching you with their cute bright eyes. I love watching it snuggle itself in it's anemone.
I idea of watching this cute little fish attacked by a mantis makes me wonder why someone would see joy in this for any reason.

My vote is that this is unethical.

I only gave this thread the barest of a skim, but let me comment on the mantis thing. I don't believe any account of a mantis that will accept "only" live feed of any kind. get the thing hungry enough and it will eat just about anything you offer it; live fish isn't a necessity, it's just what it has gotten used to. It's just a matter of breaking its habit. That said, for many mantis shrimp, live feed is an essential part of its diet; smashers to be specific. Without regular feedings of hard shelled foods, the mantis won't exercise its raptorial appendages and will eventually tear them off. You can use shells stuffed with frozen food, but only if the bug doesn't learn to just pull the food out of the shell without breaking the shell. Spearers don't really require live feed. For the record, I think predation is a fascinating and natural process that goes a lot deeper than something eating another thing. I don't have the patience for bleeding hearts that think "nature" should be a disney film.

edit: yes I have ocean dwellers cooped up in a glass prison. freshwater ones too. I'm a self-confessed hypocrite; we all are one way or the other.

Well said!

Let me guess, you are city born and raised, and think that food comes from Safeway? Have you ever been on a farm?