Amphibians and pet store feeder fish...

[Linds]

My frog is big enough for feeder goldfish now so I thought I would start offering him some. I was edumacated over in the fish forum how sicky these guys can be when coming from a store,m and was advised to treat them with ick medicine a few days prior to feeding, is this ok? Will the amphibians be affected by the meds? Do they even need to be treated since they are not being fed to other fish, but are being fed to an amphibian? Can amphibians catch anything that fish may carry? This whole fish thing is totally foreign to me :o I'm used to rodents or bugs..hehehe ;)

[Duncan]

Hi Linds,

I used to feed my "pac man" frog feeder goldfish exclusively for 5 years and never had any problems. I never treated them beforehand and I don't believe that a fish disease like "ich" can be transmitted to amphibians. Bacterial infections might be another story, but like I said, I never had any problems. Because my frog wouldn't eat the fish out of a dish, I had to hand feed them (watch out! I was bitten a number of times . . . big frogs draw blood and are hard to convince to let go once they've latched on!). To make things a little easier on me, the frog (and the fish to a degree), I would take the feeders and freeze them in the water that I got them in (from the petstore) before I fed them. That way it was a relatively humane way to euthanize the fish (it just slows done and then "stops"), it was easier to hold on to a motionless fish vs. a live flipping feeder, and I could then use tongs to hold the fish in front of the frog (less blood letting on my part!). The freezing may have also reduced the risk of any live pathogens being transmitted too, I'm not sure?

Hope this helps,

Duncan