Feeding bait fish for food

[Wolf89]

I've read a bunch about how good fresh and live food is for fish. I live on the bouge sound in eastern NC and I can go in my back yard with a net a catch tons of 1-6 inch baitfish(finger mullet). I also read through @Paul B that clams are extremely good for fish aswell. I can get those too. My worry is that they, especially the fish, can get my fish sick. Will freezing it before hand be enough? Thoughts welcome. Thanks

 

[Peach02]

I've read a bunch about how good fresh and live food is for fish. I live on the bouge sound in eastern NC and I can go in my back yard with a net a catch tons of 1-6 inch baitfish(finger mullet). I also read through @Paul B that clams are extremely good for fish aswell. I can get those too. My worry is that they, especially the fish, can get my fish sick. Will freezing it before hand be enough? Thoughts welcome. Thanks

you could only do this with predatory fish especially with how big mullet can get. plus if fish X has illness A and fish Y that eats fish X has a chance of getting illness A, I don't know a lot about this but I don't think freezing it would fix the problem.

 

[Wolf89]

you could only do this with predatory fish especially with how big mullet can get. plus if fish X has illness A and fish Y that eats fish X has a chance of getting illness A, I don't know a lot about this but I don't think freezing it would fix the problem.

I would cut it into small pieces

 

[Peach02]

I would cut it into small pieces

that fixes what fish takes it but there is still the problem of a fish getting a disease. What fish are you thinking of feeding this way

 

[linkedsilas]

I don’t think a typical freezer would kill what you’re wanting to kill. Trust me when I say I get you’re trying to save money but it’s not worth the loss of your tank. You can get parasites, diseases etc.
lots of people go to the stores and buy their seafood or buy premade frozen

 

[Wolf89]

I don’t think a typical freezer would kill what you’re wanting to kill. Trust me when I say I get you’re trying to save money but it’s not worth the loss of your tank. You can get parasites, diseases etc.
lots of people go to the stores and buy their seafood or buy premade frozen

What's the difference between seafood at the store and seafood I harvest myself?

 

[MnFish1]

What's the difference between seafood at the store and seafood I harvest myself?

One difference is quality control - (LRS for example knows where there source fish are coming from - and hopefully have an idea of any possible diseases) When you're doing this 'from your back yard' - how do you know there aren't toxins local to where you are harvesting your fish? If you feed high concentrations of this fish in your tank - you're getting a lot more toxins per gram of food than if that food was collected over a wide area. Suppose you have a local vibrio outbreak - this may not be killed by freezing - do you want to add that to your tank? Im not aware CI etc is killed - with freezing -I know that it takes at least 24 hours of freezing fish to kill tapeworm eggs and larvae (at -31 F) - which most home freezers will not do. There red tide - local concentrations of PCBs and other chemicals in various areas, etc. IMHO - its not worth the risk.