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Recently I was in a local Petco and was asking a woman about how healthy the feeder fish are. Well, according to her, and knowing how messy fish are in general, I don't doubt her word even a little, they can carry bacteria.

Do I want that in their tank, or, in their bodies? I thought this would be an important thing to keep in mind. I have yet to read a thread about a person's turtle falling ill because of bacteria from a feeder fish, after all, they eat them in the wild. But I figured it'd be a nice thing to know.

I'm sure the megaworms (jumbo mealworms) that I feed Sadie probably carry bacteria too... She eats them right away though, they don't hang around in the tank like a feeder fish would.

I don't know, but we're pretty sure that Miss Bowser got some sort of parasite from crickets we bought from Petsmart.
The feeder fish at pet stores look pretty icky...like their water is all cloudy and stuff.

I feed my turtles fish and iv never seen anything wrong with them. The fish at my local Petsmart are super healthy looking compared to any other pet shop iv ever visited.

Yep its true, if you feed you turtles live prey you run the risk of passing anything it might be carrying. Feeder fish most commonly give turtles parasites. My vet has even warned me when they said I should get feeder fish to stimulate the turtle into eating when he was sick. Even though I knew this. Its one of the many things that has impressed me about the vet that I go to.

the rule of hand iv been following is, if you see a dead fish in the tank at the pet store, DONT buy from that tank. and if all the tanks are connected like some stores have separators on large tanks with 3 or 4 different types of fish, likelyhood those fish are sick aswell.