thanks guys. ill bring my temp down slowly. dont wana shock the fish. and the current tank is a grow out tank. i will be gettin either an 8x3x3 or a 10x3x3 within a year. and i have a ton of current already. api 265gal cannister as well as a fluval 406 for filters. im running 2 cobalt 1300gph circulation pumps that ive fitted 2 200gal air pumps to for added airation. what do u think would be easier to do for gettin him off live food? cuz the payara ive tried to get onto frozen but with no success. should i go frozen then pellets? or go straight pellets? cuz i have a lot of left over carnistix from my arowana that i use to have. but they float. are sinking ones better for them? and btw how many fish did ur gatf eat chicxulub? im guessin uve had the same problem before
Before I broke my gatf from eating life food, he killed the following list, and I must emphasize that this list is NOT all inclusive:
Red belly pacu, six silver dollars, silver arowana, vittatus tiger, red tail cuda, Indo-Pac tarpon, two bala sharks and three tinfoil barbs. Plus a couple other fish I can't think of right now. For all intents and purposes, he completely wiped out the stock that was in the tank when he was introduced. It was brutal!
Since he's started eating pellets hes gotten so lazy that he wouldn't bother the feeders that I would put in the tank occasionally as I was breaking my scomb and juruense.
For breaking them off of live, I like to use expendable, cheap teacher fish that will feed vigorously from the surface and then starve the predator after adding the teachers. I've had the best luck using teacher fish that resemble the predator. It should be noted that you can expect to lose teachers, especially with a fish as large and aggressive as your Goliath. Your Goliath, being as large as he is, is also likely to be able to go a very long time before he gets desperate enough to change his diet!
Eventually, the predator will notice the feeding behavior of the teachers and begin to mimic it. I've managed to break every mid- or surface-level predator that I own using this method. The only fish I haven't broken using this method is my juruense catfish who simply won't come to the surface, but will happily eat sinking pellets. On the whole, I've mad MUCH better luck with floating pellets and as such I prefer them, but other people here have had different experiences and have different preferences.
The hardest fish for me to break was my scomb, it took him three months! The next hardest was the Goliath at about a month, but I was learning how to do it with the Goliath. I broke my current vittatus, my tanzaniae, my silver pike, my tat and my PTC all in less than three days using the methods I described above. Good luck!
