i see food
fed this guy a peppermint shrimp today. i figured it would be good to toss one in every once and awhile to give him somthing besides gut packed ghost shrimp.
are you going to try to switch him to frozen? i woud definitely recommend it. the sooner the better before he gets to fat and happy on live!!
i want to try but wanted to let him have 2 weeks in the tank first to get fat and rest and settle in. but from what i have read the ambon in not very likley to eat frozen less so than a rhino or other related sp.
i think part of the problem is this fish seems to enjoy the hunt. it takes 30 min to move 5 inches one scoot at a time then it kind of dances ( dont look at me im algae) then scoots again. till he is about an inch away then bam blink and you’ll miss it. realy cool to watch but might make it hard to train frozen. it suprises me that it hunts more activly than ambush.
[quote=“GreenFishyNHam09, post:45, topic:2244”]
but from what i have read the ambon in not very likley to eat frozen less so than a rhino or other related sp.[/quote]
There are always exceptions to the rule and since this isn’t a popular fish this could easily be something someone said after having limited experience with one fish and it has been passed on over and over again. I’d try regardless.
Try frozen ASAP. It may have been at a wholesaler for a while and may currently be starved. Wholesalers never feed there fish. Who knows how long it has been since a meal. Since there is a chance it needs to eat a lot right now to recover from food shortages in the recent past it may be willing to eat things it wouldn’t normally eat.
Many fish considered none reef safe may actually work ok in a reef if fed well enough. Triggers for example will eat anything if they are starving and have an inefficient digestive tract and are messy eaters, so they must be fed a lot. A trigger that is not fed well enough will try to eat everything including the silicone on a tank!(seen it happen)
I would try frozen tomorrow. Try it for 3-4 days with out garlic and then if you want try soaking it in garlic extract first.
he has been well fed for the least week so he’s prob not starving but what frozen would your recomend?
i would find the closest thing to what its currently eating. maybe even try a dead grass shrimp on a feeding stick, just to get it used to the feeding stick b4 switching the food itself…
maybe even try a dead grass shrimp on a feeding stick, just to get it used to the feeding stick b4 switching the food itself...
good idea. some fish can be very tough and you might have to try a lot of things to get him to take frozen. i know its a little different, but ive had good luck training two different mandarins to eat frozen. its the only reason im able to keep my mandarin in a 34g sucessfully. in both cases the trick was offering a mix of live and frozen food at the same time. i started off with about 95% live brine and 5% frozen spirulna brine(so i could tell em apart). it took a while but i was eventually able to slowly increase the frozen until they would both eat frozen exlusively. its always worth the effort IMO
[quote=“fishguy9, post:49, topic:2244”]
i would find the closest thing to what its currently eating. maybe even try a dead grass shrimp on a feeding stick, just to get it used to the feeding stick b4 switching the food itself…[/quote]
Good call. Might try some krill and maybe small silver sides or sand eels. I would pay attention to the packaging on the food you buy for him. I have found packages, from the same company, of silver sides with fish too small for my eel to see and some packages full of fish too large for my eel to eat.(well now there is no such thing as too large, but there was in the past.)
Note: I know that some similar fish including frog fish can have trouble if they accidently swallow air. I would be careful about foods that float. If a frog fish gulps air at the surface(or if lifted out of the water) they often times have trouble expelling it and can be severely or fatally injured. I have found that sometimes krill will be filled with air(especially if it is IQF-Individually Quick Frozen) submerging it and squeezing it will release the bubbles. I often times thaw mine in fresh water and use a fork and smush them down a little bit to release some bubbles.
It would also probably be a very good idea to soak the foods in vitamins. I have also heard the betta glucan can be added to the food, but I have never found a source.(something I’ve been meaning to do, I believe GNC may be one) I have heard mixed things about garlic(nothing bad some debate it just doesn’t do anything), but I occasionally add it to my predators food.
Ok, that is probably way to much info for anyone else reading this thread, but hope it helps Greenfishy.
[quote=“logans_daddy, post:50, topic:2244”]
in both cases the trick was offering a mix of live and frozen food at the same time.[/quote]
Can be a lot to that. The food it is used to can initiate a feeding response and it may just get carried away and eat anything near by. Hopefully it likes it and remembers to eat it next time and eventually begins a feeding response to just the new food. Never leave uneaten food in the tank for long, especially if you are trying to train an animal to eat it. If it is always around then it’s smell or presence won’t get the animal excited.(kind of like a predator that grew up with smaller fish and never considers them a food source)
thanks guys im gona give this a shot over the next week or so.
Cool, keep us updated and keep the pics coming. Beautiful animal.
Or…
You can always have Fugu!
With rice rolls.
are nice.
Check these out John! These guys are what i was talking about early in the thread. They sell out quick, but LA gets them fairly often. I think living in a townhouse is the only thing keeping me from having a 100 tanks sometimes ;D
http://liveaquaria.com/diversden/ItemDisplay.cfm?c=2733+3&ddid=74885
Awe! They look like they are in love too! Hey L-D! if the townhome next to yours goes up for sale, you could buy it, knock out some walls and convert it to a split level tank room! Theres always a way!
sweet fish shawn the price isnt 2 bad. ya we got the 90 and 20l in a one bedroom apt so i think were about maxed out. but when we have a house i could see a lot us having a lot more tanks
Hey Shawn, do you still have a pair of Mandarin fish to spawn? That’s a possible. It’s been done before with some care.
I have the male but i lost the female a while back out of the blue. I cant prove it, but im convinced that my tang killed her.