feeding my spotted grouper

I just bought this grouper. The guy at the pet store told me he fed it small fresh water fish. I dont know the type he fed it they looked like minows. Is it ok to feed it those? I thought it was weird. If thats a bad idea what should i feed it?

 

They'll eat pretty much anything you put in front of him. but I would keep him fed on frozen prawns, silversides, krill, etc. Just so he doesnt have that much of a hunting instinct if you plan on keeping him with something that may be a potential meal.

 

+1The only freshwater fish I would feed it would be Mollies.

 

Yeah a lot of people feed there predators goldfish and feeders, which after a while can be dangerous for the fish, try to keep the diet as varied as possible, like what reefplayground suggested

 

What the......?! Seriously!? Pet stores are still recommending freshwater fish as a permanent solution!

That fish should take frozen flesh readily, if not, ghosties, mollies and guppies can help you in their interim while you train. Ghosties more then the other two, if possible, but I know they can sometimes be hard to come by or cost outrageous prices. They say guppies and mollies don't have thiaminase, but I'm not too sure if that's really true. I have never run across an official Guppy/Mollie nutritional assay and have never been able to find the root of that "factoid". They have found bacteria associated with thiaminase in the gut of the guppy, which I find suspicious in light of the lack of raw data. Thiaminase is the devil. Soon as that food item is dead, it starts to work on the vitamin B1 (thiamine) and render it useless. Freezing the food doesn't stop the process and nor does eating it. While it is in the live fishes belly, it ill continue to remove B1 from the live fish itself. Sounds kind of like the movie Alien!

As far as prawn, silversides and Krill are concerned, you have to mix it up more than that. Some brands of frozen silversides actually contain thiminase in them. I recommend San Francisco Brand or Ocean Nutrition, as they are thiaminase free. But be careful with frozen fish food altogether, as you have no idea how long they have been frozen. They usually have a Best Before date on there, but I guarantee you their idea of Best Before and mine are way different. I just looked at a package in my freezer and it says Best Before 12/2013. Seriously! That will be nutritionally void by then.... not to mention rancid.

Prawns have thiaminase. Krill has no vitamins. A lot of fish exhibit a condition called Lock Jaw when fed a diet exclusively of krill. I believe it to be a nutritional deficiency of Vitamin C with possibly a little influence from the toxic amounts of fluoride in the shell. That's my opinion, so no one quote that as fact.

I've never run into anything that wouldn't eat salmon. Pick wild or farmed if you can. Farmed salmon has more incidence of parasites and they were not raised on the beautiful diet of the wild. If you compare the nutritional assay of the two you'll see they are completely different. I actually feed both do to that very fact they are so different.

Does your local grocery store have a seafood counter?