Aggression Test

[drkegel]

Drew - I respect your opinion. If you don't want to watch fish eat and don't think it's "cool", then fine and I repsect that opinion.
I didn't respect the way you originally posted your differing viewpoint on the matter. THe eyeroll and the "yeah that's cool man" comment. I didn't find that very respectful, which bothered me, and which is why I decided to reply to your post.
I'll agree to disagree with you. Would love to swap stories about working in LFS, as I work in one too. Have some really interesting stories to share, as I'm sure you do too.
kalim - I make no distinction between mantis shrimp and other fish that eat live foods. i don't think any of these creatures are "evil" or cause "needless suffering". I've never had one, and don't want one, because I don't think I could afford to keep it alive, and I don't want to see if it's true that they can break the glass on my tank - which would lead to a truly horrid death - suffocation if I weren't around when it happened. I'm not generalizing here, and I'm sure there are people out there that have different opinions/ideas than me, but that's how I feel about the matter.

 

[supercichlid]

Just gunna say something here.
For the people who are talking about "fish eat feeders in the wild", and "yeah they are in tanks so what", in our tanks, there is 4 'walls' to the feeder. The feeder cannot escape. In the wild, the fish would have a chance to escape. Whether you agree with them or not, that is true.
Now, lets get to the nitty-gritty.
Why do we use feeders?
We use feeders for a number of reasons, the main one is to provide 'entertainment' of sorts, for us. We like to see a little hunting, and there is no real harm in that IMO, its natural for us to want to see that. Now, another reason we use them is for fish that are not taking frozen foods. Such as scorpion fish etc, i know some of them will only take ghost shrimp for long periods of time. Again, IMO that is fine, but what i would do is "gut-load" them, like you would with crickets, when feeding to a spider, scorpion etc.
They are the two main resons we use feeders...none of them are for their high nutritional value. We can get all that from a large range of frozen and prepared foods.
Just my opinion...
James