134 Fish and Game Warden. [Bull. No. 1. 



A tadpole is essentially a vegetable feeder* and has a very 

 long intestine, like other animals that eat and live upon vege- 

 table matter, for digesting and assimilating such material. 

 The tadpole is gradually changed or developed into a bullfrog. 

 A bullfrog eats no vegetable food ; it feeds on insects and vari- 

 ous other forms of live animals. The Channel catfish or the 

 Black bass may devour the bullfrog, and these fish in turn 

 serve as food for man. Whether we eat bass or beefsteak the 

 basis of the food is vegetable matter that has been consumed 

 and changed into animal tissue by vegetable-eating or herbivo- 

 rous forms of life. Thus it is that vegetation becomes the 

 basis of all fish life, and it makes little difi'erence whether the 

 fish eat worms, mollusks, grasshoppers, crayfish, frogs or other 

 fish, the fact remains that the basis of all fish life is vegetable 

 matter. Therefore it becomes necessary for the fish culturist, 

 and for all parties who expect to engage in the fish culture 

 business, to have more or less knowledge of the vegetable life 

 that is or should be produced in the waters where fish are to 

 be raised. 



The Vegetable Waste in Ponds and Streams. 



• 



It is possible for the fish culturist to study the vegetable 

 growth in any body of water and to utilize it to a greater or 

 less extent for fish food. We have by way of experiment 

 utilized a good portion of the vegetable matter in small ponds 

 by placing goldfish, carp and gizzard shad in them. These 

 fish converted much of what was the natural waste in these 

 ponds into fish flesh. Thousands of young fish were reared and 

 the old fish increased in size upon what naturally grew in the 

 ponds. Much of this growth of low forms of both plant and 

 animal life in the ponds was nothing more than waste until 

 converted by fish into an economic product. 



The idea of using the waste material in any body of water 

 for food and converting it into fish is one of great importance 

 to the fish culturist and to the commercial interests of the 

 country. The vegetable-eating fish, so to speak, belong chiefly 

 to the Cyprinidse or minnow, and the Catostomidse or sucker, 

 families, and include such fish as the buffaloes, the carp, the 

 goldfishes, and in fact nearly all fish with suckerlike mouths. 

 These fish not only eat coarse vegetable matter, but much stuff 

 that belongs to the lower orders of both plant and animal life. 

 In other words, they convert much of the natural waste in any 

 body of water into fish. If we do not care for such fish as the 

 buffalo, the sucker, the goldfish and the carp, they can be used 

 as food for other fish, such as the bass, the crappie, the sun- 

 fishes and the catfishes. 



* The food of the tadpole, so far as our observations go, is almost 

 entirely made up of vegetable matter. The common Spirogyra and other 

 green algae are among the common articles of diet. However, at the State 

 Fish Hatchery we have noticed them feeding on pieces of fish, meat or 

 bread that were left on the feeding grounds where fish had been fed. 



