initiating feeding response

Jadran

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Hi all,

had to reboot my system due to some parasite issues, so I left few fishes with LFS. They did me a favour and accepted to safekeep my ocellaris pair and z.scopas for little over an month for me.

Strange thing is these fishes wont eat anything anymore :( These are not some recently wild caught extra hard to "get to eat" fishes but my own captive bread clowns and zebra tang that I had for few years and they always accepted all offered food very greedily.

Colleague and me we speculate it must be some medicine industry uses in their holding / quarantine systems..

Any experiences here? I've been offering all kind of foods (spirulina flakes, mixed granulated formulas of various sorts etc.) with little to no effect.

If I keep feeding aggressively like that to initiate the response i'll flash my newly established tank's water quality down the toilet..

any ideas?

thx.
 

Reef.

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I would think the LFS only offer a very limited range of food, ask them what they fed, they will now be used to only eating that, hopefully they should eat at least that again, add in other foods at the same time.

If that doesn’t work, try loads of different frozen food and live, you will hit on one, mine love lobster eggs and cyclops and brine shrimp seems to be a fav too.
 
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Jadran

Jadran

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did that,, garlic enritched krill granules they say. Have some in my car and will try to feed them later on today.
At this stage I'd rather avoid feeding frozen meaty stuff. This is new setup and it still have to go long way before it stabilises.
 

Reef.

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did that,, garlic enritched krill granules they say. Have some in my car and will try to feed them later on today.
At this stage I'd rather avoid feeding frozen meaty stuff. This is new setup and it still have to go long way before it stabilises.

two things there...first if your fish are not eating, getting them to eat should be your first priority and 2nd frozen food generally has far less nutrients to pollute the tank, pellets will release way more pollution into the tank.
 
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Jadran

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frozen food generally has far less nutrients to pollute the tank, pellets will release way more pollution into the tank.
that might be true, I dont know and cant debate it , but what I do know well is the ugly smell dead snail leaves behind or lets say say one single block of brine shrimp/krill or mysid forgoten in a glass overnight.. it simply dont feels right to load up my sand with rotting meat at this stage.

on the bright side, they seemed to react a little,, still have a long way to go but we saw them picking here and there and it is a start. Still it makes me wander whatever happened to them, why dont they accept food voraciously as tehy always did...
 

1guydude

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Shy. Uve changed their surroundings. They are being shy. You stand and watch them eat? Try creeping around a corner or peeking on them. U might see em eating. Live brine shrimp or chinese market fish eggs could help u too.
Spectrapure was making sone good pellets last i was reefing i think they r.
I really like roe in the bottle. And rods.
Hths
D
 

Reef.

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that might be true, I dont know and cant debate it , but what I do know well is the ugly smell dead snail leaves behind or lets say say one single block of brine shrimp/krill or mysid forgoten in a glass overnight.. it simply dont feels right to load up my sand with rotting meat at this stage.

on the bright side, they seemed to react a little,, still have a long way to go but we saw them picking here and there and it is a start. Still it makes me wander whatever happened to them, why dont they accept food voraciously as tehy always did...

You seem set in your ways...so for others that may read this thread, frozen food has generally less PO4 and nitrates and does not tend to sit on the sand bed as much as pellets do, with the frozen food being lighter in weight it tends to be kept in the water column and is drawn into your filtering system, be that floss or filter socks, so can be removed easier than pellets sitting on the sand bed.
 

onewooten

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You seem set in your ways...so for others that may read this thread, frozen food has generally less PO4 and nitrates and does not tend to sit on the sand bed as much as pellets do, with the frozen food being lighter in weight it tends to be kept in the water column and is drawn into your filtering system, be that floss or filter socks, so can be removed easier than pellets sitting on the sand bed.
That is very good information! Kinda like fresh food vs. processed foods for humans. Makes sense!!! Thanks for that!
 

Reef.

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That is very good information! Kinda like fresh food vs. processed foods for humans. Makes sense!!! Thanks for that!

Good comparison, pellets are a very condensed form of food, feed a good range of frozen and the fish should get what they need, and have a more natural experience feeding, I leave the powerheads on, the fish seem to enjoy chasing the food and this also helps keep the food in the water column so the filter system ends up getting the left overs.
 

1guydude

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Yes ive seen flake food and pellets compared to feeding popcorn and cheap hot dogs. Lol.

Ive been guilty of feeding flake. Cheap seafood mix from winco but ive also fed a ton of pe mysis and rods.

Maybe in the future i will run a dc pwr pump and replace the sp6 so i can turn it down when feeding. Plan is to open up the flush blow off and let my sump take the flow during feeding time rn.

Happy friday all!
D
 

onewooten

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Yes ive seen flake food and pellets compared to feeding popcorn and cheap hot dogs. Lol.

Ive been guilty of feeding flake. Cheap seafood mix from winco but ive also fed a ton of pe mysis and rods.

Maybe in the future i will run a dc pwr pump and replace the sp6 so i can turn it down when feeding. Plan is to open up the flush blow off and let my sump take the flow during feeding time rn.

Happy friday all!
D
....but I do like a good smoked hot dog and some butter popcorn from time to time!!! :)
 

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