I have a large aquarium in the basement of my house which houses largemouth bass, channel, blue, and flathead catfish. I have been buying minnows every week to feed them My supplier calls them the most expensive fish in town. I have considering raising my own minnows to feed. I have a seperate 125 gal aquarium in my basement and also a 1500 gallon pond tha is 5 ft. deep in my back yard. I'm sure it is possible to raise these minnows, but I need some guidance to start. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Jeff

Rosy reds are very easy to breed. Robyn has a really good page on that if you havent already seen it: http://fishpondinfo.com/rosy2.htm#breed Basically all you need is good water conditions, hiding spots (plants, pots, etc...) After they lay eggs (which they soon will) you can either leave them and hope the fry don't get eaten or you can put the babies/eggs in a seperate container until they big enough not to get eaten.
I would quarenteen(sp?) your rosies first since they are usually kept in horrible conditions and 9 out of 10 times has some type of sickness.

My main rosy red minnow page is at http://www.fishpondinfo.com/rosies.htm

The breeding section has tips on sexing, sex ratios, caves for the egg laying, egg care, fry care, etc.

In an aquarium, you can certainly get fry. The problem is that you'd need multiple tanks to grow out the minnows until they were the size that you wanted to feed to your carnivorous fish. Rosy reds can breed by 6 months old but most sold as feeders are half that age.

If you have a pond, that's a better bet for growing out larger numbers of rosy reds as they'd have more room to grow. They would have to avoid predators though including any other fish you added, herons, bullfrogs, raccoons, etc. I have a colony of rosy reds in a 153 gallon pond. I do nothing to help or protect the babies, and my colony stays pretty stable with 30 to 60 individuals when I count each March during the cleaning. My point is that the numbers do not go up, in this case, due to predation. If you had an indoor pond, that would be safer for the fry.

In the end, most people decide it's easier and cheaper to just buy the "feeder fish." The main problem (aside from going there and paying for them) is that they are almost always diseased. They can easily give your other fish parasites, bacteria, funguses, etc. through no fault of their own. They are just so poorly taken care of.

How big is your bass and catfish tank? Those fish do best in over 1000 gallons.

I have read the article on the website. It is very good. My bass and catfish tank is 600 gallons. I have plans to build a 1500 gallon tank in the future. The bass is currently about 18 inches long , and the catfish varying from 11" to 18".

Large carnivores?

I used to have some piranhas and they were fed mainly on frozen bloodworm - it's meaty, nutritious and disease free.

I think your fish may enjoy that as well. I also heard you can get special 'fish flavour' steak heart (frozen) and that also seems very good.

If you can get some carnivore flake or carnivore tablets/granules that would be great. If the flake seems too small, wash your hands, wet the flakes and screw them up into a bite sized ball.

Tetra Doromin and TetraBetta are both good food choices for carnivores. The new Tetra Freshdelica could interest your fish.