Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Seeing the recent hooplah over horned frog feeding techniques and prey items, I have found a few reasons that goldfish are NOT suitable staple prey items in a froigs diet.....

Goldfish contain thiaminase, an enzyme that breaks down the B-complex vitamin thiamin. For this reason, feeding a diet of only goldfish could result in a thiamin deficiency.

The only way to guarantee healthy feeder fish is to "quarantine" them for 2 weeks in a separate tank.........some fish can be carriers of a disease and never exhibit symptoms. That means that even after quarantining them, they can still pass it on to your frog.

Can you point me to the material on the thiaminase, and it's effects.

I had some good references on the subject, but unfortunately I cannot find them at this time. There have been numerous discussions of thiamin deficiencies on the turtle and crocodilian forums. Consider doing a search.
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*Humans aren't the only species on earth... we just act like it.

".the oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without
spoiling it."
Aldo Leopold (1938)

A thiaminase overview; I believe this info is generally the same for all vertebrates.

http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/plants/toxicagents/thiaminase/thiaminase.html

and here's a handy table of thiaminase occurance in fish

http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/plants/toxicagents/thiaminase/thiaminase.html

I think you just put the same link, there's no table on the second one, it's the same as the first. I would like to see the table, and see what i can do to counteract the deficiency with something that way it would be possible to continue feeding goldfish. But i will have to do a lot of looking into it.

Thiaminase is very heat labile, so if you are feeding frozen or killed fish, you could heat it up in hot water (about 140 degrees) for about 10 minutes. The alternative with live fish might be to alternate with food dusted with some extra B1 powder, as the thiaminase in the fish viscera will act in the digestive tract. I'm basing this on mammalian physiology and not that of amphibians, with the assumption that they are similar enough to extrapolate. You would essentially be overwhelming the thiaminase activity with the extra thiamine. This is just a thought to play around with, maybe stimulate further discussion. I don't intend it to be inarguable.
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Patty
Lost River, Idaho

4 D. auratus blue
3 D. galactonotus pumpkin orange splash back
5 D. imitator
4 D. leukomelas
4 D. pumilio Bastimentos

I'm feeding live fish, I'm looking into what I can do so fish can still be fed safely.

Here's that second link

http://books.nap.edu/books/030903325X/html/65.html#pagetop