Local food...

[Shagsbeard]

Has anyone local here ever tried to harvest food from the ocean? Would adding fresh crab meat, copepods, chopped molusk meat (like mussels and what not) be a safe thing to consider? Living just a couple blocks from the beach had me thinking it might even be healtier for my fish to give them some food fresh out of the ocean.

I currently am feeding my butterfly mysid and brine shrimp with Selcon occasonally, but people are telling me I should add other foods to his diet.

[BBishop]

I use to feed hermit crabs and mussels to an octopus I had. This was about 20 years ago though.

[Random Aquarist]

What fish do you have? I'm planning on raising phytoplankton and maybe zooplankton. I'd suggest you do the same. Here's the site I'm using: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/aug2002/breeder.htm
I had another site on favorites, but the page couldn't be found.

[Shagsbeard]

I'm more interesting in going down to the local tide pools and harvesting 'pods to suppliment my fish food with. Growing my own plankton seems kind of silly if I could just go harvest some from the local beaches.

[BBishop]

In the book 'Breeding Orchid Dottybacks' by Martin Moe, collecting wild plankton was the only way he was able to raise the fry succesfully. I have also collected plankton using a bright light at night. most of what I collected was zooplankton and my purpose was to see what it would turn into, mostly blennies.

[mrhanky976]

In reply to:

"I'm more interesting in going down to the local tide pools and harvesting 'pods to suppliment my fish food with. Growing my own plankton seems kind of silly if I could just go harvest some from the local beaches."

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Just be sure that there are no CA DFG officials around. I was once yelled at for taking a cup of water with some sand in it.

If you get a permit, you're cool.

http://www.dfg.ca.gov/enforcement/refuges.html