Feeding your fish fishing scraps

[BigRed78]

Hell0 everyone! I’ve been thinking about this idea for a while. I’m an avid fisherman and keep fish for the table quite often. When you fillet a fish there is lots of leftover fish that gets thrown away. I was wondering if it would be safe to put some of the scraps in a food processor and feed it to my fish? If it’s safe which parts of the fish could they eat? Would organ meat be good for them?

 

[Lovefish77]

I actually use the white chunky pieces of white meat around the intestines (not the fish meat fillets) to feed my black widow anemones and they have been splitting a lot
One thing to do it has to be wild caught fish and not farm raised (due to chemicals and antibiotics)

 

[ichthyogeek]

Depends on what the fish is in my opinion. Are we talking fresh or saltwater fish? And what fish are you feeding? I definitely wouldn't feed the liver of any carnivorous fish (too much uptake of other stuff gets lodged in there like mercury). On the other hand, fish roe is amazing, since all those eggs are lipid-y pearls of goodness. There's usually a nice chunk of meat in the fish "cheek" (I've been watching too many cooking shows again...), which is useful. And you can probably use the flesh that's left on the spine as well. The fins and gills are useless unless feeding predator fish. I'm willing to bet that the large/small intestines would make a good probiotic food as well; just make sure to remove the colon.

Whatever you do, make sure you freeze the fish flesh for an appropriate amount of time in order to kill off as many internal parasites as possible. Farm raised may come with chemicals (ooh, spooky) and antibiotics, but wild caught have all those happy bacteria and parasites and such.

 

[BigRed78]

It’s all fresh caught saltwater fish. Usually striped bass and blue fish. The cheek meat is the best part so I’m not willing to give that up lol. Generally I don’t get any fish with roe in it. Anything that looks pregnant gets released to repopulate the stocks. All of the meat would be frozen to kill the parasites but the mercury seems like cause for concern.

 

[Sump Crab]

I feed roe I find while cleaning fish. The entire reef loves it!

I just freeze the egg sacks whole and cut off a piece to feed every so often as a treat. Mostly use speckled sea trout roe.

 

[ichthyogeek]

Hmmm....they certainly look tasty!

Those fish seem pretty high up in the food web. I'd definitely not add any liver, or anything that seems to bioaccumulate mercury, or is associated with the excretory system. So no kidneys, no liver, stay away from the colon and urethra. The heart should be fine, as will the upper intestines. And all the tasty meat between the fish spines post-filleting as well! Although you might want to save the bones for stock instead...