Christmas Came Early

[L600]

So finally man up and bought the ATF from my LFS. Managed to get a 10% discount, so price tag wasn't too bad compared to getting from a vendor. 2.5-3", so little but has these needle like teeth. I bought 20 rosies, I know I should get him on pellets ASAP but I just wanna see those teeth in action at least once before I completely stop live food. Currently in a 75 until he bulks up and can hang with my big datnoids. Arowanas are my favorite fish, but this ATF is easily close up there.

Some things I learned after finally having a live ATF:
1. Easily the fastest fish I've own, 0-60 speed is amazingly fast. I thought clown loaches were fast, but this guy takes the cake.
2. Really timid, any closer than 1 foot and my ATF freaks out on me
3. Depending on the angle you look at him, he actually has blue/purple reflection on his body
4. loves the current, he hangs out near the output of my AC 110

Some questions I have for the ATF owners (Rob I'm looking at you):
1. When does the red in the tail come in?
2. I know ATF are tough to get onto pellets, but is it really difficult to get them off live food in general? I have some market shrimp, will he take these readily after the rosies are gone? I agree the teacher method is a good method, but I prefer the; get them on market shrimp, feed them market shrimp stuff with pellets, starve and finally just pellets. I have datnoids and all of them are on pellets after using this technique.
3. After I get the ATF on floating pellets, can I easily switch over to sinking? Do ATF have a preference sinking vs floating pellets?
4. How long can I starve him? Remember he's only 2.5"

Heres a pic of him in the LFS, I'll get better pics today.

 

[Chicxulub]

Some questions I have for the ATF owners (Rob I'm looking at you):
1. When does the red in the tail come in?

Probably about 4" or so. It varies from fish to fish and depending on what he's eating. The sooner you get him eating prepared foods, the quicker and the richer his colors will develop. As a forskahlii, he has quite a bit of variety he could develop. Just like vittatus. He could end up with red, orange or yellow ventral fins.

2. I know ATF are tough to get onto pellets, but is it really difficult to get them off live food in general? I have some market shrimp, will he take these readily after the rosies are gone? I agree the teacher method is a good method, but I prefer the; get them on market shrimp, feed them market shrimp stuff with pellets, starve and finally just pellets. I have datnoids and all of them are on pellets after using this technique.

Changing their diet is an absolute nightmare. Getting him from live to krill will be a nightmare. Getting him from krill to floating pellets will be a nightmare. So on and so forth. ATF are habitually difficult to get to eat something else once they've decided they like something. They're creatures of habit. The market shrimp method you describe could easily work. As a matter of fact, I've never tried it. I see no reason at all to believe that it would fail.

3. After I get the ATF on floating pellets, can I easily switch over to sinking? Do ATF have a preference sinking vs floating pellets?

The tigers I've worked with have all seemed to have their own individual preferences. Some seemed to prefer floating, some sinking. I've noticed no correlation between species and pellet preference.

4. How long can I starve him? Remember he's only 2.5"

I really wish you hadn't have done the rosies, but I can understand your desire. The smaller an ATF is, the easier they are to transition. When an ATF is under 3", they tend to naturally feed on floating surface foods such as insects and seeds. After roughly three inches, they transition to an exclusively piscivorous (fish eating) diet. This is the point at which they become hard to train.

As for your actual question, that is a call you have to make. I strongly recommend quarantining him during this process if you have other things that are aggressive feeders in the main tank. A stressed tiger fish looks an awful lot like a feeder to most predators. While you're starving him, there's no set time frame for how long a fish of a size can go. You need to keep an eye on your fish and, if he's getting too thin, feed him. Do NOT give him live. I've never met an ATF that won't take blood worms. They are far less counter productive than going back to live. The call on when you need to feed him is entirely up to you. Use your common sense; if he looks overly stressed, go ahead and give him some food.

 

[L600]

Yeah so I saw him take down a rosy, after that I decided to take out the remaining rosies and feed them to my dats. Now I'm fully invested in getting him off live. I know tinfoil barbs are good, how do you feel about clown loaches? I figure I might as well get teacher fish that I would like to eventually keep.

 

[Chicxulub]

Yeah so I saw him take down a rosy, after that I decided to take out the remaining rosies and feed them to my dats. Now I'm fully invested in getting him off live. I know tinfoil barbs are good, how do you feel about clown loaches? I figure I might as well get teacher fish that I would like to eventually keep.

I think they'd be fine tankmates, but I don't think they'd be good teachers. I've never seen a CL take food from the surface.

 

[L600]

I think they'd be fine tankmates, but I don't think they'd be good teachers. I've never seen a CL take food from the surface.

So came back from Petsmart, bought 5x clown loaches and 1x tinfoil barb. Evry clown loach I've own has always taken food from the top, middle, bottom. Trust me, wheres theres food there will be clown loaches. So I couldn't find any hikari carnisticks, so I figure I tried some shrimp stuffed with hikari sinking gold and see if that works. anything other than live is great.

 

[Chicxulub]

So came back from Petsmart, bought 5x clown loaches and 1x tinfoil barb. Evry clown loach I've own has always taken food from the top, middle, bottom. Trust me, wheres theres food there will be clown loaches. So I couldn't find any hikari carnisticks, so I figure I tried some shrimp stuffed with hikari sinking gold and see if that works. anything other than live is great.

Yeah anything is better for these guys than live feeders. It sounds like you're in the ballpark. I expect you'll be successful.

 

[L600]

Yeah anything is better for these guys than live feeders. It sounds like you're in the ballpark. I expect you'll be successful.

I haven't used feeders in easily 10 years (I was young and had an arowana), now I remember why I stopped using them. Its not because of the whole inhumane peta thing, its that they increase bioload, get stuck in the filter screen tube, possible parasites, and yeah its just a PITA in general using them. I'm using shrimp in the meantime and transitioning to pellets as soon as I find some of that hikari stick pellets.

 

[BuffaloPolypteridae]

I think with what your trying you'll be fine, I'm going to be doing something similar with my batf for feeding. I got my red hi fin on pellet by rolling earthworms in hikari carni dust before feeding them, then stopped the earthworms, now he only get earthworms maybe twice a week, and once every couple weeks I toss some guppies I breed in there. I feel like it lessens the stress of a predator if it can use its abilities every once in a while. Haven't used rosies since my first Senegal in high school. Can't wait for updates on this lil guy, probably the smallest one I've seen since I got into em

Sent from my DROID4 using MonsterAquariaNetwork App

 

[L600]

Minor success, I took market shrimp and thread fishing line through the shrimp and tied the shrimp near the filter outflow so the shrimp was dancing around the middle of the tank. the atf took the shrimp!!! Live to frozen in one day, not too bad.

 

[Chicxulub]

Awesome!

We need pics, man!