I know feeding freshwater fish/shrimp are not good for lions and I don't really have a steady supply of damsels close to me at all times. What do you feed your lions? (I don't have the fish yet, but aquarium is up and cycled, just waiting on the fish to come to the store this week.) I am open to breeding stuff for it to eat if I need to. I've heard you can just get frozen shrimp at your local grocery store but I don't know how accurate that is.
Food For Lions
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Muttley000
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Feeding shrimp exclusively is not good in the long run. Search vitamin B deficiency in lionfish and you should find some info Bob Fenner had at WetWeb Media on the subject
I feed my lions ghosties, mollies, and guppies; i have 6 lions with these included in their diets, my oldest lion is 7 years old, I've kept them as long as 11 years with this being their main diet.
If you have the money and time to feed marine fish and shrimp, have at it. If kept properly, fed and enhanced, I don't think you'll find any difference. If you feed marine and don't qt and treat for parasites, good luck. Good luck finding marine shrimp not kept in a system with fish, which means a possibility of carrying disease.
The bad rep of feedng fresh water fare likely comes from feeding gold fish and rosies, which is not a good idea. Ive had tbis debate many times with people who have barely kept a predator alive for a few months, and some that have never kept them at all. On paper it makes sense, but in reality it's just not practical for most.
A qt tank, a holding tank for qt'd fare, and the expense and maintenace to go with it. I spend $80 a month on live foods and really no maintenace to speak of on my feeding tank. That would be close to $250 and the maintenace of 2 marine tanks for all real life purpose would likely make no diffefence.
I've had positive results keeping my dwarf and medium bkdied lions at least supplemented with live feedings. While I've found many not do so well long term on a dead only diet.
If you have the money and time to feed marine fish and shrimp, have at it. If kept properly, fed and enhanced, I don't think you'll find any difference. If you feed marine and don't qt and treat for parasites, good luck. Good luck finding marine shrimp not kept in a system with fish, which means a possibility of carrying disease.
The bad rep of feedng fresh water fare likely comes from feeding gold fish and rosies, which is not a good idea. Ive had tbis debate many times with people who have barely kept a predator alive for a few months, and some that have never kept them at all. On paper it makes sense, but in reality it's just not practical for most.
A qt tank, a holding tank for qt'd fare, and the expense and maintenace to go with it. I spend $80 a month on live foods and really no maintenace to speak of on my feeding tank. That would be close to $250 and the maintenace of 2 marine tanks for all real life purpose would likely make no diffefence.
I've had positive results keeping my dwarf and medium bkdied lions at least supplemented with live feedings. While I've found many not do so well long term on a dead only diet.
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I have used many feeding set ups through the years, presently I have a 10g fresh water set up that I keep mollies, ghosties, and guppies in. I've done the sw route, have bred my own in fresh and sw. You really have find what works for you, your budget and your time, and what's available to you. Keeping a fresh water feeding tank is the safest, period, fresh water diseases will not(or I have never seen) transfer to your marine tank. While parasites may be present in fw fish as well, lions especially have a strong gut, maybe strong enough to protect from fw parasites. But I have seen more than I can count, predators dying from parasites from marine fish, ich and velvet. Sw mollies get ich pretty easily.
What I do is dose my feeder tank with marine vita chem. I feed the feeders a variety of marine flake and micro pellet food, you can see the pellets in the gbosties guts, liks little supercharger bits of nutrition. You figure the pellets are in the guts of the fish as well. I pull the feeders for the feeding into a container with feeder tank water, I dose with Brightwell aminomega or selcon and wait 20-30 minutes, tbis was recommended by Brightwell. As they say "proof is in the pudding", years of healthy, vibrant, strong predators.
4 lbs of human grade krill from the asian market for $20, at the lfs $80. Many of my lions through the years wouldn't touch the pink stuff from the lfs, most of this you can get whole fully formed little shrimp, the lions are much more apt to take this stuff. I only supplement their feeding with this, and my other fish enjoy it added into their diet as well. I turn the pumps off in my lion tank and can just drop these in one at a time and they just pick them off, lions will usually not take any food off the ground, so you must keep whatever you are feeding them suspended.
Daniel@R2R
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4FordFamily
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Mine eats frozen now, I soak freeze-dried krill in selcon, zoecon, and vita chem. Puffers and lions find it irresistible. Not the most nutritious thing on earth stand-alone, however.
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I have had many Lions in the past.
My best and least messy foods were: Krill, Silversides, jumbo Mysis shrimp, and as many mentioned guppies and mollies as especially Mollies survive in sea water. I also gave an occasional trio of feeder goldfish but caution as feeder goldfish can be parasitical.
My best and least messy foods were: Krill, Silversides, jumbo Mysis shrimp, and as many mentioned guppies and mollies as especially Mollies survive in sea water. I also gave an occasional trio of feeder goldfish but caution as feeder goldfish can be parasitical.
vetteguy53081
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Lionsreef
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I've fed my dwarf zebra lionfish fresh water ghost shrimp exclusively for over 2 years. I buy them in bulk and freeze them immediately. Then pull out 2-3 per day depending on the size of the shrimp. You don't want to feed them gold fish though. These have little food value.
My dwarf fuzzy has started to grab chunks of frozen Rods food. He’s in a 65 with a filefish. I put it in the flow so it’s shoots by him and gets his attention. I’ve also gotten some frozen mysis eaten this way. I also have live guppies and ghost shrimp.
Bluelobstor
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I had a volitans that I fed live red wigglers from Wal-Mart that I just rinsed the dirt off and threw it in the water. He also ate silversides, krill, fish flesh, scallops, and cut pieces of shrimp.
MombasaLionfish
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I'm starting a fancy guppy tank [could not find feeder guppies] to feed a lionfish.
MombasaLionfish
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Haha!
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