Feeder fish

I currently raise common guppies as feeders for my lionfish. (He's being quite stubborn about switching to frozen food.)

What are some other easily bred fish that could be used as feeders?
I know as a kid I kept swordtails and black mollies which both produced young with no effort on my part. For some reason though I rarely if ever see these anymore.
Something of decent size, high reproduction rate, and a good growth rate would be ideal. And of course something that doesn't have any specific conditions or nesting requirements.

Originally Posted by Clay Davenport

I know as a kid I kept swordtails and black mollies which both produced young with no effort on my part. For some reason though I rarely if ever see these anymore.

Black mollies work quite well for feeding saltwater fish, because they can actually tolerate the saltwater for a short period of time.

Yeah, I knew the mollies were a sort of brackish fish, but I haven't seen any around here in years. Perhaps I need to look a little harder. They used to be a tank of them in every fish store.

I was actually quite surprised by the guppies ability to tolerate the salt water. I've seen them acting normally up to 5 minutes after introduction. The lion always has them all eaten by then.
I did try something called "rosy reds" once. They began convulsing immediately and were dead in less than a minute in the salt tank, so I didn't bother with them again.

I can still find them quite easily around here in pet stores. It seems like every year the pet stores around here have a shrinking freshwater section. More and more lately the saltwater tanks are what people want, someday I will setup both again. First my house needs to "grow" overnight. LOL!!

Clay, they have black mollies here for $1.50 each, since you are in NC I can pick them up and Fed X ground them to you and they would get there in 1 day. Its a small local family run shop and I go there a few times a weeks so just let me know if you need any. We bought 4 Monday and they are doing great.

I'll keep that in mind Wendy, I appreciate it.
I'm going to hit the local shops around here first just to make sure nobody has any.

It's been so many years since I had any mollies I don't really remember much about them other than the fact I did nothing to get them to reproduce.
Either of you know off hand what the reproduction rate of the mollies is compared to the common guppies I have now?
With the mollies being larger and brackish fish, I'd really rather use them. Not to mention the fact that they are nicer looking than my guppies. But if they are not relatively fast producers then it will be harder to switch to them completely.

Looks like they can be pretty good breeders, here is the best f te info I found online

"How many Babies will She Release? The number of babies varies. The first time a female releases babies, she will usually have only 12 to 30. It may take her a few hours to release the entire batch of babies, and some of these babies may still be eggs or even stillborn.

Often a Female Molly will still look very round, after she has released her entire batch of babies, because she may still be full of fertilized eggs, that will soon begin to develop into more babies.

About a month later she should release another batch with about 50% more babies, even if there is no male Molly in the aquarium, because a female Molly can retain many fertilized eggs in her body for several months.

So a female Molly can release babies each month for about five or six months. Then she may be depleted of fertilized eggs. At which time you could put her back in an aquarium with a male Molly. Very large older female Mollies can release hundreds of babies at one time."

From: http://www.aquariumfish.net/informat..._fish.htm#top2

Just thought I would mention that guppies can be acclimated to SW. When I kept seahorses I knew of several people who had guppies that they kept as feeders. I think they took a few generations to get them up to full strength seawater but after that they did great. Personally, I've never had near the reproductive rate with mollies that my guppies have. One upside to mollies though is that they supposedly will eat algae if they aren't lunch right away.