The copper country evening news. [volume] (Calumet, Mich.) 18??-1907, 1897-07-28
FEEDING IN AOUARlUMS.
Some Curious Methods Employed For the
Greater Comfort of the Fishes.

when first brought into captivity, as in
aquariums, and they are very apt at
first to refuse food. Sometimes fish re-
fuse persistently week after week, TAX
ing none at all and growing thinner and
thinner and weaker, until finally they
die. Usually, however, the fishes, with
proper care, come to feed, though many
of them may need to be pampered and
nursed along at first. Finally many of
the fishes, as they become accustomed
to captivity, get very tame, so that they
will take food from the hand Some OF
the fishes that will do this are fishes
that might not be thought of as feeding
in this manner. The Goldfish, for in
stance, will come to the surface after 1T
has become used to captivity and take a
strip of fish held down to it in the fin
gers, at the same time gulping in with
ID noisily great mouthful of air and
water.
While there Is at first necessary for
their welfare not only the greatest care,
but such food only as they have been
accustomed TO in nature or as they like
best, it is in most cases possible later to
switch the fishes off to other things,
with occasional return to their natural
food. Some fishes, however, will eat
only live food, and this must always be
provided for them. Not infrequently the
food, whatever it may be, must be fed
in some special way to meet the require
ments of individual fishes, and some OF
the methods employed are curious and
interesting.
Fishes in captivity have fewer op.
portunities, oftener they have none
whatever, of lying in ambush for their
prey, and they have far less room for
sweep and action in pursuit. Killies
placed i'll pool or tank as food for
larger fishes evade pursuit if they can
and seek the edges of the water, by the
walls or the surface, whittier they are
less likely to be followed. Killies will
live for days out of water in properly
dampened moss or seaweed. When first
put back into the water, they are slug
gish in movement, but they soon re-
cover their natural activity.
In feeding live killies it is not unusu-
so that they may be more easily cap
tured by the fishes they are to be fed to-,
which might otherwise be unable to
capture them at all, or which might
get them only at the risk of doing in
jury to themselves by running into the
walls of the tank. Sometimes among
| the fishes brought to an aquarium there
may be one that has lost an eye. Such
| fish is particularly liable to injury in
pursuit by running into walls on its
blind side, and to such fishes there are
always fed slow killies, and they are
put into the water on the side on which
J the fish can see.
There is at the aquarium hawksbill
turtle from the Yowl islands, off the
coast of New Guinea. The hawksbill
J eats CLANS cut up into pieces that it can
handle. 1t likes killies, but it could not
begin to catch live killie in the quar-.
tiers which it occupies, and at first il
was difficult for it to pick up dead ones.
! So the killies were fed to it on the point
of stick 1t is doubtful whether fishe;
suffer pain from any injury, but II
would have seemed like cruelty to i'm
pale live killie, and so the killies
were killed by the very simple but eff
fective method of throwing them upon
the floor. The greater weight OF the
fish is toward the head. That end nat
urally reaches the floor first. The fish il
most sensitive at the nose. The SHOCK
killed the killie, and the freshly killed
food was then conveyed to the hawks
bills mouth by aid of the pointed stick,
which was withdrawn when the turtle
had set it's beak in the food. Now the
hawksbill has become more accustomed
to its quarters, and it eats well and is
able to pick up the killed killies out Of
the water.
Sometimes fish are cut into strips
which, floating down through the wa
ter, may be mistaken for live fish. Some
times such strips are carried down int
tank upon the tip Of rod and moved
about in the water to attract slow feed
ing fish by their semblance to live small
fish. There are many fishes that car
swallow fish as big or nearly as big al
themselves. The sculpin and the Sc;
raven are such fishes. They have yer.
large heads and proportionately larg'
mouths. When they are feeling well
they will, like many other fishes, ris'
to the top to get the food as soon as it il
dropped into the water. If one sees
sea raven or a sculpin rising straigh
up through the water in this manner
with its big mouth wide open, he cal
begin to understand how it could swal
low fish as big as itself, for it seem
as if one could see inside of it clear t.
its tail.
There are some fishes that have par
ticular fancy for worms. For these, i
there is not supply at hand, fresh bee
is cut into strips resembling worms
New York Sun.
The Antiquity of Man.
$40 nn