I think I may have made a feeding mistake

[justintrask]

So I keep wild strain guppied, none of this fancytail crap. Just good old grown out feeder guppies.

I wanted to see if my anemone would eat live fish, so I said what the heck and threw a feeder guppy in there. Well the anemone caught it, and now sucked it down almost into its body. Should I try to get it out? Or is it good that the anemone ate within a week of putting him in the tank?

[Ice]

Why are you feeding it freshwater fish ? It's not good for them.

[emc7]

It's not good for them.

I don't think its an issue. Public aquariums often feed salt-water shrimp and salt-water raised guppies to freshwater fish and freshwater guppies and mysis shrimp to salt-water fish. There is a theory that feeding salt to fresh and vice-versa reduces the chance of introducing diseases from the food.

[Scuba Kid]

How are guppies not good for anemones? What's the reasoning behind it?
Some freshwater fish don't make good feeders for saltwater fish, like goldfish, although because they are high in fat and lack an abundance of good nutrients, they really don't make a good food for anything.

Anyway, its not going to hurt your anemone to eat the guppy, it will be fine. Its not the best food in the world for it but its not going to suddenly die because you fed it a freshwater fish. Just don't make live guppies the norm for it.

[Felicia]

From what I understand, the reason freshwater foods are not healthy for saltwater fish is because the freshwater animals do not contain as much HUFAs, or Highly Unsaturated Fatty Acids. A saltwater fish fed only a freshwater diet will die of fatty liver disease and malnutrition.

I don't think much is known about feeding freshwater foods to saltwater invertebrates, but it doesn't seem to be too much of a concern to me, especially if it is done sparingly.

And don't worry, it does take a while for an anemone to completely "swallow" its food.