Can't get them to eat non-live food.

[Cubeology]

Does anyone else have problem getting apistos to eat flake, granular, and freeze-dried food? I've tried all of these and they don't pay any attention to them at all, they just drift/fall past them with no reaction. I don't want all this food rotting on the bottom of the tank. The only thing that I can get is live black worms. I imagine they would eat some other live food, but I haven't tried. I want to give them a varied diet but they aren't cooperating. Is it important to give them this varied diet?

 

[regani]

Just don't feed them for a few days and then start with a little flake food. When they are hungry enough they will eat it.
Foods that contain some garlic also seem to stimulate the appetite.

Alternatively you can hatch brine shrimp as life food. The dry eggs can be easily shipped and last for a long time if stored properly. You can hatch only as much as you need per day.

 

[Linus_Cello]

What about NLS Thera A+ pellets? The garlic may entice them.

 

[Jonm]

I have had some luck with lottsoffish #2 and Repashy meat pie.

 

[Psycho74]

I mix the food up each day from frozen blood worms, dry blood worms and bbs.

The one in the community tank also eats pellets which they normally don't eat, so just goes to show when they are hungry enough, and competing for their food they will eat many types of food.


Cheers,
Shane

 

[gerald]

"Just don't feed them for a few days and then start with a little flake food. When they are hungry enough they will eat it."

In my experience this may not work, especially with wild fish or even some tank-bred fish not accustomed to dry foods. If they starve for too long, organ damage occurs and they may never recover. I would continue offering live and frozen foods, and keep some tetras or other fish that eat flakes/pellets with them, and maybe they'll adapt to dry foods. Some fish just never do. What kind of Apistos are you having trouble with, and are they wild or tank-bred?

 

[Simon Morgan]

Have you tried microworm? Very easy to culture and potentially lasts for ever.

 

[Chrisd123]

Not sure if this is relevant but I was wondering if you keep other species with your apisto's?
When I was reconditioning spring salmon for a restocking/conservation programme, we often kept trout in the tamks with them. Because the trout would nail anything that was dropped in it created competition which would trigger the salmon to feed. I know it is a completely different scenario but I assume the principles would be the same....if you had some fish that readily accept other feeds it may trigger your apisto's to feed. Just a thought.

 

[Cubeology]

I wouldn't want to deprive them of food for any length of time because they are very juvenile, not the time for them to be underfed.

I will look into some of the foods mentioned, although I have enough of different kinds food to feed fish for two years. I do have a product called garlic guard, might try that.

I have thought of starting a culture of something, I was looking at starting a culture of white worms, I thought microworms were more for fry. I read about raising blackworms but it appears to be more difficult than these others. I saw http://www.fishgobble.com/ sells starter cultures of all kinds of food species. I have also read about raising brine shrimp from cysts, but that actually sounds like more trouble than raising some of these various worms in a culture.

The only other species with them are black neon tetras, they eat the processed foods but not very enthusiastically and let most of it to drift right on past as well. I don't really mind feeding them the black worms, I have a cheap source for them. Feeding this particular small tank (apistos and tetras), I could feed them nothing but blackworms for less than $2 a month. I have just read a number of different places that it isn't healthy to feed them nothing but live foods, or at least should feed them different live foods.

 

[Cubeology]

I have read a number of places that blackworms are not good for apistos. I will look into getting a microworm culture and some of that Rapashy Meat Pie food. Curious how to deliver the gel food to the apistos? Can it be delivered via pipette. Need to be able to get it past the tetras and don't want it floating around the tank.

 

[Jonm]

Ted Judy has really good videos of how he prepares his Repashy foods on his website. The gel food sinks to the bottom of the tank. If you want to keep it up in the water column you can use a feeder disk, string or something like it. All of my fish will go to the bottom to get it even my wild caught pyrrhulina cf. brevis. It may take a couple of days for them to figure it out though. Lottsoffish #2 can be found on AquaBid and is a combination of floating and sinking. Besides the pyrrhulina, I am feeding corys, black neons, WC A. Panduro and A. Agassizii, etc. Good luck.