How to get centropydge to start eating?

[Dawneme]

Hi, i wanted to get a bicolor or eibli angel for my tank, but i heard theyre rather hard to introduce eating served food, any tips on how to make it learn?

Cant teach it by following other fish, my tank only have blennies that eats and then hides back to its cave

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Hi, i wanted to get a bicolor or eibli angel for my tank, but i heard theyre rather hard to introduce eating served food, any tips on how to make it learn?

Cant teach it by following other fish, my tank only have blennies that eats and then hides back to its cave

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

Eibli angels generally feed well from the start, small frozen mysid shrimp work well, and then they will transition to pellets and other foods. Bicolors can be hit or miss, but those that won't feed at all often have some internal issue that cannot be "trained" away.

I see you are in Indonesia. Are you aware that cyanide is used to collect some fish there? This leaves a percentage of the fish with varying degrees of damage. Signs include not eating or excessive shyness. There is also a higher overall mortality rate with these fish. Because Centropyge angels are small, fast and cryptic, they are often caught that way.

 

[Dawneme]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

Eibli angels generally feed well from the start, small frozen mysid shrimp work well, and then they will transition to pellets and other foods. Bicolors can be hit or miss, but those that won't feed at all often have some internal issue that cannot be "trained" away.

I see you are in Indonesia. Are you aware that cyanide is used to collect some fish there? This leaves a percentage of the fish with varying degrees of damage. Signs include not eating or excessive shyness. There is also a higher overall mortality rate with these fish. Because Centropyge angels are small, fast and cryptic, they are often caught that way.

Ahh i see, ive heard about it few times about fish collecting with cyanide, but the lfs i got it from said that the fisherman have permit for the collecting, so idk if they still use it or not, i really really wish there are more people who captive bred angelfish, only 1 known company manage to captive bred angelfish, but its out of my range of shipping

Also thank you for the info

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Ahh i see, ive heard about it few times about fish collecting with cyanide, but the lfs i got it from said that the fisherman have permit for the collecting, so idk if they still use it or not, i really really wish there are more people who captive bred angelfish, only 1 known company manage to captive bred angelfish, but its out of my range of shipping

Also thank you for the info

Quick story: A friend of mine started a business importing fish from Jakarta back in 1980 because the quality of fish he normally imported from the Philippines was so poor due to their use of cyanide. After a few years, he noticed the price of their emperor angelfish suddenly dropped substantially. When he asked why, they responded that they now caught "batman" (the name they gave that fish) with "magic" and were much easier to get them in good numbers. He called me from Jakarta, literally crying because he learned that meant they had begun using cyanide too. Sure enough, the quality of the fish he got soon began to drop, and he eventually closed his import business. Since then, there have been some reforms, and cyanide collection was made totally illegal, but it still continues with certain species (deepwater fish, hepatus tangs and coral gobies).

 

[Zionas]

@Jay Hemdal This is why I believe the best hope for deepwater fish becoming more accessible is captive breeding despite all the hurdles. There’s collectors in Japan with deepwater species basically nowhere else can get, and I bet at least a good % of them have been alive for a number of years if not over a decade, but that’s the cream of the crop and I believe the expertise and luck involved in conditioning them is simply not available to 99.9% of hobbyists.

We can only hope.

I don’t think it’s just cyanide that means the fish we get are already compromised by the time they get to us. Lots of brute net catching also damages the fish externally and internally.

The Blueline Angels from Taiwan and Vietnam often arrive in bad quality if they’re fishermen’s catch, and I’m glad Poma Labs does them (hopefully more batches soon).