Bichir vs Ropefish

[the lion who ate the sun]

Oh you can get any poly to eat pellets. Just takes patience. I had a few seemingly hopeless cases that I trained in the last few months ago. Now they eat 90% pellets.

The solution?

Week one- grind the pellet of choice up to the point where the pieces are very small--mix this with their favorite frozen food (also ground up unless blood worms) and a few drops of garlic extract (garlic optional). Let it sit for fifteen minutes. If done right you will have a substance somewhere between a solid and a paste. Put this on the substrate by hand so it does not dissipate (turn off your impellers). I thawed 4 days of blood worms at a time and kept them in the fridge in an air tight container, using a portion of the blood worm 'juice' in the mix.

Week two- same thing as week one, add larger pieces of pellets progressively throughout the week. You might need to mix some of the blood worm/krill/etc. 'juice' you used to thaw the frozen food to the mix to allow larger pieces to soften up. *Make sure they are mixed well enough so that one cannot be eaten without the other*

Week three- continue increasing the size of the pellets. You will definitely want to soak it all in the water you use to thaw your frozen food.

Onward-- continue decreasing frozen and stepping up the amount of pellet. After a certain point you can wait a day or two without feeding, then add only pellets.

Works wonders. You will need to make sure you are not missing water changes with this method, and monitoring params. It can be messy at times, but once they're pellet trained--its forever.

 

[PrettyPoly]

Oh you can get any poly to eat pellets. Just takes patience. I had a few seemingly hopeless cases that I trained in the last few months ago. Now they eat 90% pellets.

The solution?

Week one- grind the pellet of choice up to the point where the pieces are very small--mix this with their favorite frozen food (also ground up unless blood worms) and a few drops of garlic extract (garlic optional). Let it sit for fifteen minutes. If done right you will have a substance somewhere between a solid and a paste. Put this on the substrate by hand so it does not dissipate (turn off your impellers). I thawed 4 days of blood worms at a time and kept them in the fridge in an air tight container, using a portion of the blood worm 'juice' in the mix.

Week two- same thing as week one, add larger pieces of pellets progressively throughout the week. You might need to mix some of the blood worm/krill/etc. 'juice' you used to thaw the frozen food to the mix to allow larger pieces to soften up. *Make sure they are mixed well enough so that one cannot be eaten without the other*

Week three- continue increasing the size of the pellets. You will definitely want to soak it all in the water you use to thaw your frozen food.

Onward-- continue decreasing frozen and stepping up the amount of pellet. After a certain point you can wait a day or two without feeding, then add only pellets.

Works wonders. You will need to make sure you are not missing water changes with this method, and monitoring params. It can be messy at times, but once they're pellet trained--its forever.

Glad the OP asked this question and glad you answered! Really useful info here.

 

[RLHam3]

Honestly, you should get both. They require almost the same amount of care.

I agree if tank size is not limited. I will admit that ropefish as a species/genus are more active than polypterus, but I would suggest that you "sharpen your teeth" with upper-jaw polypterus.

Polys can definitely have personality. My original P. senegalus is by far my most active fish in my polypterid tank. I would get a few upper-jaws, wait a while for your polys to gain a little size, and then introduce a group of longer ropefish. IME this really helps the ropes to start eating. The bichirs tend to take more readily to captive foods (especially some of the more common captive bred species). So its monkey see, monkey do with such similar species. This method has worked for me several times in the past, not only on polypterids, and is how I got my own ropes to start eating.

Ropes and bichirs are very similar and hardy fish, but IMO ropefish generally tend to have more health and eating issues. The main one that comes to mind is macrogyrodactylus, a parasicitic worm. Most if not all ropes are from the wild, and a large amount of them come in with some degree of these worms. The worms can take weeks to months to manifest, but are very aggressive when they do.
So make sure to quarantine very carefully. I have used prazipro without issue, but I would make sure to do some research before dosing. Many would suggest cutting the dose of many medications for polypterids.