From the looks of it it looks like he can't digest the outer shell of the larvae. If you still want to feed insect larvae to it I would suggest switching to wax worms. They are a much softer larvae but the only down side I've seen to feeding fish these is that their poop will come out white like the flesh of the larvae. You should still be able to find wax worms at most hunting and fishing retailer's atm but they will stop selling them pretty soon once all the rivers and lakes thaw out.
Thanks, I've heard bsfl have high amounts of protein and calcium so I might stick with this for now and see how it works overtime cuz he loves eating it though. He's eaten centipedes, frogs, all sorts of insects and worms with no issues but the fact that this is well just... larvae it confuses me.
Chitin is hard for most things to digest, think of it like cats eating their own hair. They can't digest it so it either passes out the rear end or it comes back up the front end. Well fish lack the ability to throw up so it will just thru instead. Granted it doesn't hurt the fish to eat more natural things, the only thing you have to be careful of is wild caught food as they may contain parasites and diseases that they have no immunity for.
That makes sense, also yes I quarantine any live food I give my predator fishes like monitor the food for a good 2 or 3 days and if I still have a second thought that thing isn't going in my fishes belly. Centipedes in and around my villa, most live foods depend on seasons and availability tbh. The last one I gave him was around 6 to 7 inches I'm guessing. I've heard some stores sell live centipedes never tried that. Never tried mice. What live foods do you give your aro or your fishes?
Wax worms, meal worms, endler/guppies, red wriggler worms, night crawler worms, pinkie mice, spring peeper frogs, baby garter snakes, dubia roaches. Used to feed convict cichlid fry but had to stop after the fish couldn't catch them. Basically I feed what ever my flowerhorns will eat.
You feed all of those to a flowerhorn? Also, you should definitely get an Aro when you have all the resources it's a real delightful experience for a hobbyist to watch them grow and transform. I'm considering keeping flowerhorns again I love the personality on these cichlids.
Lol my FH's eat most anything I feed. They love live food but mainly get fed pellets. They like the red wrigglers the most tho. Allot of the foods in the list I mentioned are mostly seasonal except the mice and endler guppies, I breed my own. Spring peeper frogs are tiny lil things, usually around the size of a thumb nail at most.
Haha for sure. My aro loves red wigglers and night crawlers. I did feed guppies initially when he was small but they outgrow the food soon enough and small fish get harder to hunt for them in a tank so off the radar. I feed him shiners or tilapia. Silver and black aros are real hardy fish tbh they survive most extreme conditions or beginner errors. Asian aros are the perfect aros the US is really missing out!!
Had a silver once, brought it home, acclimated it, released it into the tank just to whatch it go belly up in less then 5 mins. Granted my lfs ships them in so I'm thinking it was used to soft water rather then hard water. Still sucked buying my first aro for $80 at 6in just to have it die right away. I'll eventually get another but that won't be till my 2,000g is built in a few years.
