pyramid butterfly fish eating pellets only

Notsolostfish

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like the title saying. I bought a pyramid butterfly fish that's eating pellets only. Not touching frozen. What's gonna happen to it? i continue to feed frozen it ignores.
 
Time to buy some clams and/or mussels from the grocery store, and see whether it can resist it. I have also had 'Butterfly success' shaving off pieces of frozen scallops. Hopefully it will turn into a nice transition to frozen items. Best wishes!
 
How long has it been in your tank? I don't feel a fish eating only pellets is a sign of a fish in trouble. I have 3 Pyramid Butterflyfish that are champion chowhounds. Just keep offering different foods. Your fish isn't going to shrivel up and die eating only pellets.
 
I started keeping different butterfly fish 2 months ago in my mixed garden. They will not touch dry food. I have much diver collected live rock with diverse micro fauna & fana that they munch on continually. They eat frozen mysis and live chopped up mussels. I have numerous ornamental sponges and much ornamental seaweeds that they graze on biofilms.

In my understanding, dry food only is not a good recipe for long term success with most fish especially butterfly fish.

A common cause of fatality in CBB is constipation. I suspect high protein dry food contributes to constipation without fiber.
 
My point is my experience with Pyramid Butterflyfish (vs. CBB) is that they are not difficult to feed. But again...just my experience. Maybe hold the pellets and feed PE Mysis for a few days instead?

I have a dedicated clownfish/anemone tank. I added a Royal Gramma to the tank. At first that darn fish would only eat pellets. But high quality pellets, so I didn't worry. But once that fish starting eating PE Mysis there was no turning back.

Good luck. Those little fishies know how to make us jump through hoops.
 
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What kind of pellets are you feeding? Some are garbage, some are great.
TDO Chromaboost, Saki-Hikari Marine (herbivore and carnivore), and dki. I feed some pellets everyday. I feel high quality pellets supply nutrients that mysis may not, and I don't feed the mixed food frozen preparations.
 
Like you mentioned, certain species may not have diets that are well-formulated for them. However, in general it is far better for a fish to eat pellets and not frozen than vice versa. The pellets are formulated to meet the nutritional standards for specific species, or varieties of species depending on the diet. They contain vitamin premixes, and typically fish meal to ensure fish get the necessary fatty acids. They are far more complete than non-diverse frozen diets. For instance, if you just feed your fish shrimp they can end up with a vitamin B1 deficiency. There's a lot of thiaminase in shrimp.

Pretty much all farmed fish are fed pelleted diets exclusively, for their entire lives. If you're raising salmon there are a bunch of salmon-specific diets available. It's in the aquarium trade that you see more generalized diets for multiple species because we keep a wider variety.

You'd probably want more of an herbivore diet for your fish than a carnivore diet. I met a well-renowned cichlid breeder once (in FL if that gives it away) and he said that for most of his cichlid species he fed a mix of cichlid pellets and koi pellets to reduce the protein content.

Also, remember that it's generally fine to feed a marine diet to freshwater fishes, but if you do the opposite your fish could end up with fatty acid deficiencies. Freshwater fish are just better at turning one fatty acid into another (desaturation and elongation). Marine fish need more specific fats in their diets, to put it simply.
 
I have fed TDO Chromoboost pretty much exclusively now for two years.

I just inherited a half black mimic tang that doesn't care at all about flake foods and asked the previous owner what he fed.. So now I'm entering in to feeding at least 1x a day of frozen, and one sheet of Nori.

Funny with the nori, I tried previously (about 7 tangs and a few other fish), and they just left the nori alone. But now? Geezus, its a party. I'll take the win.
 
Some fish are just picky. I had a maroon clown that basically only ate brine shrimp for a couple of years. I have a purple tang that for the first 2 years ate pellets, flakes and PE mysis, but would not touch Hikari mysis. Then started after 2 years.
 
TDO Chromaboost, Saki-Hikari Marine (herbivore and carnivore), and dki. I feed some pellets everyday. I feel high quality pellets supply nutrients that mysis may not, and I don't feed the mixed food frozen preparations.
I like high quality pellets too. And flakes. And frozen.

Hard to argue against the superiority of frozen, but without flakes and pellets I (or my tanks) would be pretty screwed in a number of situations.

That said, I feed 100% frozen when possible, and I also go through A LOT of pellets and flake. 🤷‍♂️
 

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