I have a pet largemouth bass. well i have 2 largemouth. the big one is my
problem. he is about 10 inches long TL and he eats too much. last week he
ate a gardner snake in about 20 seconds. a frog was slow to go down but the
frog was jumping to get out of the tank and the largemouth hit him on the
surface with such a splash plenty of water went flying. then a good sized
koi donated by me. then a big crawfish. he took in the crawfish 4 times.
he was very hard shelled. on the second spit out one of the large claws
came off. but once lined up tail first down the hatch he went. actually he
went down pretty fast. what a battle that was. the crawfish kept
going in claws first and he must have clawed the inside of the poor
largemouth. hehe. the frog took a long time, i think because the frog is
fat. the frog was basically into the fish's mouth and stayed their but i
think he had to turn the frog around or something, and he kept kicking
inside the fish mouth and the fish had to really fight it so that it did not
get away. it went down with one leg sticking out of the fish's mouth.
the small one about 3 to 4 inches long TL eats about a dozen small tadpoles
a day. i must have several hundred tadpoles in my little above ground
ponds. the tadpoles grow super fast compared to fish and so seem like an
ideal food to grow fast.
the large one is about 10 inches plus and the small one is only about 3 to 4
inches. they are in separate tanks or else the small one would last about 2
seconds.
anyway the large one is happy to have goldfish, koi, small snakes, frogs,
tadpoles, small fish of other kinds, etc. he is so lightning fast it is
almost unbelieveable. and he never misses. the big one takes in small
stuff like he is bored. but the big stuff and he goes crazy berserk.
tonight i went bluegill fishing for food for him. well it worked. i caught
a 12 month old bluegill and i know he is too big for the largemouth. i had
tried before. anyway. this time i sliced the bluegill lengthwise by sort
of cutting off the stomach. i left the head on the fish. well i held the
tail and put the head into the tank and the l0 inch largemouth bass grabbed
it fast. took it down as a regular fish eating it head first. well i was
happy with that. then i took one side of the stomach part and the small one
took that.
well if they will take fish filets then my problem of feeding them is
basically gone. tonight when i fed them it was past sundown and pretty dark
so they could not see the fish well. maybe that helped. also they have
become very friendly knowing that i feed them. they beg me for food all the
time.
about 2 weeks ago i fed the large one a goldfish and then a filet and he
took it then i gave him another filet with the top dorsal fin and the rays
were too spiny for the largemouths mouth and he chomped on it a couple of
times with the filet up and down in the mouth. ( wrong way with the rays
digging into the largemouth's mouth and so he spit it out and would not take
another non-living food from me until tonight. i guess it took some trust
from snakes, frogs, fish and crawfish.
Oh yes, the large largemouth is in a 6 ft long 125 gallon tank size and the
3 to 4 inch one is in a 29 gallon. the little one i think i can see it grow
so fast.
the little one had his mouth stuffed with tadpoles and saw a water bug swim
by. well he went crazy and spit out a tadpole to grab the bug then he
realized he was missing the tadpole so he spit out the bug to grab the
tadpole then he watched the bug swim and he finally figured it out. he spit
out a tadpole again and swallowed the bug and then got the tadpole for about
the 4 th time and ate that.
any food that goes by him he has to eat it even if his mouth is full. he
did the same with tadpoles once. basically taking in the tadpoles killing
them in his mouth and spitting them out and taking more tadpoles. then at
the end cleaning up and eating all the dead tadpoles. and with his belly
bulging he begs for more. hehe.
george
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