Is Whiting safe to feed?

[kibakiba]

My mom bought a bag of whiting fillets and asked if I could feed them to my snakes.. And I cant find what the species is, as it's just called "whiting fillet" However... I have found a few species of "whiting" that fit what the fillet looks like... There is "Merlangius merlangus", Alaska Pollock(Theragra chalcogramma) and Southern blue whiting (Micromesistius australis).
The brand is Depoe Bay, if that helps anyone identify what it might be. It's a really delicious fish, and it's really cheap to get 20 fillets, only 4 dollars.. So if I can feed it to them it'd be a big plus.

[guidofatherof5]

Many fish get called Whiting.
Whiting (Merluccius bilinearis) is on the safe list.

[kibakiba]

Well, I'm not sure of the species so that's the problem... But, I don't know would the length of it help identify it? Maybe we have a fish expert here.. Haha.It's about 6 inches long and 1.5-2 inches tall... Somebody identify the fishies!

If it isn't a safe fish, would it still be okay to give them, say, a head sized piece once a month?

[Didymus20X6]

If used sparingly, I don't see a problem. The only difficulty I would foresee would be parasites. Parasites can be easily killed by freezing the fish for an extended period, but long freezing increases the likelihood of a thiaminase problem.

A simple solution would be to cook the fish. That kills both thiaminase and parasites, and even helps to leech out certain chemicals, like salt. But I'm not sure how keen garters are on eating cooked fish. You could always try pouring some fish oil on the cooked product.

[chris-uk]

Whiting is going to be a sea fish, I've fed pollock to the girls at one point, but moved away from it because I decided that fresh water fish was a better option. If your whiting is pollock the research I did showed that it is thiaminase-free.

For my 2 pennies worth, these fillets are probably not going to do any harm to your snakies.

[kibakiba]

These fillets are frozen, and have been for a few months. They're bagged in the fish section of the store... I'll just give it to them as a treat I guess. I don't want to risk killing them because it's a lot cheaper to feed. They have 2 big bags of pinkies, and about 6 oz of salmon.... I'm sure they would like a different type of fish every once in a while though.


And on the topic of fish... Are white cloud feeders okay to feed? I think that's what they're called... Bridges always has those, but never any guppies.

[guidofatherof5]

Had to look that one up. Says they are a common minnow from China.
Looks like they have two strikes against them
How to keep and breed white clouds, Tanichthys albonubes, with pictures

[Stefan-A]

Had to look that one up. Says they are a common minnow from China.
Looks like they have two strikes against them
How to keep and breed white clouds, Tanichthys albonubes, with pictures

Yeah, for all we know they could be rats painted silver with lead paint.

[kibakiba]

Haha, definitely not going to bother with those then! The last time we went there they had (golden) gold fish that they were claiming were fancy guppies. Fancy guppies are long and thin, compared to the extremely pudgy looking goldfish... If that was a guppy, then I'm Angelina Jolie.

[EasternGirl]

As to whether or not garters will eat cooked fish...mine do. Sometimes when I am thawing frozen fish...I put it in a plastic bag and run it under warm water to thaw...it will end up getting a little cooked because the water is too warm and the pieces of the fish are small. A couple of times I have taken it out of the bag and discovered that it has been basically cooked by the hot water...but I didn't want to waste it...so I decided to try to feed it to the snakes anyway. They ate it, no problem. Of course, as I have said before...Cee Cee would probably try to eat my cat if he was in front of her...and Possum is proving to be much like Cee Cee in that he is a piggy piggers too!