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Has anyone out there tried feeding your common garden slugs to your fish/turtles?

I raise European Nightcrawlers (EN's) to feed them however the balance is starting to get out of whack due to a mass worm casualty and the fish/turtles eating more than the worms are producing. Thus they are starting to deplete my "breeding" stock, however my garden has attracted an overabundace of slugs.

I live in an area where my neighbors are organic, so im not worried about pesticides. More worried about the slugs not being tasty enough and left to rot hidden under caves, driftwood, and in plants.

Tanks that are currently being fed EN's once a week are 90g Oscar tank with 1 12" oscar, 5 3-4" yo-yo loaches, a school of 5-7" tinfoil barbs, 14" common pleco, and 2 adult BN's. 90g tank with A. Maisoni, Yellow Labs, Copa. Mloto, 3 adult BN's, and assorted cories. These 2 tanks are planted to varying degrees and over filtered. And of course the 50g Turtle tank.

These are all established tanks running for a min of 2 years in my current house and another 3 years in a prior residence. These have all been fed nightcrawlers or EN's every 7-10 days throughout that whole time. The 20-30g tanks are occasionally fed chopped up EN's on occasion.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Bdadawg

yeah...i feed my arowana with a slug before...but only once...he ate it...nothing else happened.

I would be very hesitant to feed slugs to my fish. If I remember correctly, they produce a toxin that makes them unappetizing, so I'd imagine after one, your fish would not want another. The toxin may also affect water quality and in the worst case could make your fish sick.

Since you obviously like to feed your larger fish worms, I'd suggest keeping two colonies going at once, and alternate which colony you feed from while the other recouperates.

Hoping that there must be a word for everything I mean...

I feed them to my axie, but they are very tough and sticky, so i only feed the small ones, otherwise they are chewing and swalowing for hours.

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

Slugs - just like snails can be an effective intemediary host for roundworm tapeworm and pinworm, terrestrial species are far worse for this than aquatic ones, slugs for the most part have a higher toxicity and produce more slime than snails which enables them to defend them selves against predators. If youe have bred and raised slugs seperate from wild caught adults theres probably no harm in trying one or two, but there may be an accumulation of toxins over time, so making them a regular addition to a diet is probably not a good idea.

Last edited by longhairedgit at 01-Sep-2005 08:39