Fish not eating

[David Tucker]

Hey I am new to Apisto fish. I just got a pair of Triple red Cacatu and they wont eat flake food. They will come up and suck it into there mouth and then spit it out. I have some salad shrimp in the fridge and so I put a couple tiny pieces of this in there tank and they where wary of it at first almost acted scared then slowly checked it out then grabbed it and ran strait to there cave. Where I think it was eaten. So my question really is are these fish super choosy eaters or will they eventually take to eating flake food?

 

[CopabX]

Apistos are notoriously choosy. In time they may eat non-frozen/live foods, but that usually means starving them to the point that they will try anything. Not very good for the fish.

If you don't want to raise live foods stick with frozen bloodworms and frozen daphnia. (Also don't keep any shrimp that you care for in the same tank with them)

 

[Mike Wise]

I find apistos to be very choosy. On the other hand, I don't think many starve from being choosy eaters. They often let flakes sit on the bottom, dissolve a bit and then sift the remains out of the sand. Apistos are eartheaters after all. As long as you have a fine sand substrate, this works. Any tank with gravel, then the flakes are out of reach and decompose. This can cause real problems. I find that (like most fish) a more natural diet of live foods is best. Your apistos will do much better on at least some frozen foods.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
Try some Grindal worms, Apistogramma really like them and they are ever so easy to culture. You can feed them with a flake or pellet and the worms wriggling stimulates the fishes feeding response, making them more likely to eat the dry food. If you are in the UK PM and I'll send you some.

cheers Darrel

 

[David Tucker]

Ya thanks. I have gotten some red worms for them and have been feeding them Baby brine shrimp for the time being. They go nuts for the Baby brine shrimp. I started a bunch of brine shrimp to grow out in a tub and am looking around for some white worms to start some cultures of. I guess Grindal worms are about the same thing as white worms. They are just easier to deal with I guess. Maybe I will look around for these at the same time. At my LFS I went in and asked for some white worms and dude came out with some red worms and he said that he thought that that is what I meant. So I got a pile of red worms and bought some brine shrimp eggs. So does any body know what I can feed to the brine shrimp while they are growing out to make them more nutritious and where can I get live daphnia. I live in Eugene Oregon so no UK for me but thanks.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
I like Red worms (Lumbricus rubellus) as well, my worm culture details are here: <http://www.apistogramma.com/forum/index.php?threads/blackworm-apistogramma.10448/#post-56427>

Grindal Worms (Enchytraeus buchholzi) are just smaller White Worms, but they are much easier to keep, as they do well in warm temperatures.

BBS are probably the best staple diet, I think a number of members use them almost exclusively. Both BBS and Daphnia can be fed with any item of the right size, that will remain in suspension, like paprika, gram flour, yeast or spirulina powder, details here:
<http://www.fishlice.f9.co.uk/house/Brine Shrimps/Brine Shrimps.htm> from <http://www.ta-aquaculture.co.uk/Brine_Shrimp.htm>

If you are keen on live food "Culturing Live Foods" by M. Hellweg is well worth buying, I also use http://www.caudata.org/, there are a lot of good posts on there.

cheers Darrel

 

[David Tucker]

I always thought red worms where just Harlequin fly or Midge Fly larva and there for not really sustainable as a home farmed fish food. Thanks for the info I will be looking into Lumbricus Rubellus. I have thought also about using my compost worms but at the same time always was afraid that I would introduce some death causing bacteria or parasite.

 

[Mike Wise]

I think that you are confusing red worms, a small species of earthworms, with blood worms, a midge larvae.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
Blood-worms are chironomid midge larvae like Mike says. Red Worms are a compost worm, but you need them rather than Brandlings or Tiger worms (Eisenia foetida). An easy way to tell which you have is that Red worms are usually reddish brown or reddish violet and have an iridescent sheen, and are very lively when you touch them. Brandlings are pink and stripy with a yellow tail and much more sluggish.

You can "ranch" your own Blood-worms, details in my post in this thread <http://www.apistogramma.com/forum/i...ight-like-this-vid-breeding.11601/#post-62698> 0r with photos in this thread (apologies for the cross-post) <http://www.plecoplanet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2936&highlight=darrel+bucket>

cheers Darrel

 

[electric eel]

earthworms(red worms) are pretty easy to culture and one of the great things about them is that the babies are small enough for almost the smallest fish to eat without chopping them up.have you tried cutting up any earthworms into tiny pieces and feeding your fish.i often do this for fish that i am conditioning to breed if i dont have any baby ones available.cut off the tail and strip out the dirt and poop by holding the head end and sliding your finger down the body.cut them up into size appropriate pieces for whatever particular fish you are feeding.i hand feed them one piece at a time(so as not to foul the tank) with a toothpick or the tip of a knife.this works well if you dont have a lot of fish to feed and i havent had many fish that wont eat them.if they wont usually there is something wrong with them.i've found that the females will lay a lot more eggs when conditioned with earthworms.

 

[Gwendal]

In the first days the Apisto can no eat, but in few days they use to take the food.
Try with frozen food: blod worm, white worm, daphnia, artemia, cyclops...
Also with live food as grindal.

In a few days the Apisto could eat everything.







1 saludo

 

[David Tucker]

Yes I did try feeding them some Red Worms from my compost. I put them in a container over night with some damp napkins and then fed them the next day the worms. One was a little to long I think but he ate it. The female got one also that was a little big but she sucked it right down. One of the problems I did notice with the Red worms is that they go right into the substrate in my tank really quick and i dont like the idea of decaying worms in my tank. As for now I mostly feed them the Brine shrimp and they seam to love it. I put a little bit of flake food in there also and they seam to be more willing to take this if i feed it to them before I give them the brine shrimp. If I dont they dont even act as if it is there.

 

[David Tucker]

That is also interesting to know about the conditioning of the female to get her to lay more eggs.

 

[Linus_Cello]

One of the problems I did notice with the Red worms is that they go right into the substrate in my tank really quick and i dont like the idea of decaying worms in my tank.

Maybe you could put the worms in a little shallow dish to prevent the worms from digging in to the gravel.

 

[David Tucker]

Maybe you could put the worms in a little shallow dish to prevent the worms from digging in to the gravel.

Read more: http://www.apistogramma.com/forum/index.php?threads/fish-not-eating.12665/#ixzz1zVqei4R0​

I just had this Idea after I just fed them just know. Unfortunately the female hides from me when I walk up to the tank so I don't know if she is eating or not. I got her pinched between the tank and the siphon I use to clean the tanks the first cleaning with them in that tank and now she doesn't want anything to do with me. I did notice she is turning yellow today though which I think is good.

 

[electric eel]

i have been dry for a little while david.just getting back into the hobby again after a couple year break and as i was reading this i remembered that when i used to make paste food with night crawlers i would soak them in water for an hour or maybe less cant remember.they evacuate most of the dirt and poop that is in them when you do this and i'm sure earthworms would too.i'm not having much luck with my culture of worms this go around i ended up with some nightcrawlers in my culture(they were little when i put them in there) and i think they eat the baby earthworms.i have yet to find any baby earthworms in there.i have been feeding out of it but cutting them up(pain in the butt)admittedly i havent tried really hard.i found that production by the culture was a factor of how much you feed the brood worms(to a point) and i have only been feeding them irregularly.if you feed cut up pieces of worm you should be able to tell if if they are eating though.try dropping it somewhere in the front of the tank so you can see if they have eaten it.if not suck it out.this is one reason that i prefer sand over gravel.

 

[hedylogus]

So does any body know what I can feed to the brine shrimp while they are growing out to make them more nutritious...

I don't know about making them more nutritious, but I do something along the lines of this guy (low maintenance):

 

[Mike Wise]

I guess my question is, why grow out brine shrimp? Newly hatched shrimp are more nutritious than tank raised adults, take less effort to produce, and all apistos - even 4"/10cm fish eagerly eat them. I guess the only advantage to adults is that they produce more shrimp, but I think that there are other crustaceans better suited to cultivating.

 

[electric eel]

i agree with mike.i feed my rams and adult apistos bbs but if you are dead set on using adult brine shrimp there is a product called selcon that you can feed them to enrich them.

 

[David Tucker]

Thanks for the selcon heads up. I have read that the brine shrimp loosing there nutritiousness is an old way of thinking that the brine shrimp don't loose there nutrition value but just that the amount of fattiness is higher as they are fresh hatched and that fattiness get converted into protein as they mature into adults but other then that they are just as nutritious and by weight might actually be more nutritious. I figured since most cichlid food is geared more towards a higher protein then fat diet it would be a more staple type of food and would be able to use the blood worms, red worms and or white worms in a cycle so they are not ever just eating the same thing.