Astatheros robertsoni

[TheFishJunky]

I bought one of these about a month ago from another member.It hardly eats though.It likes blood worms and earthworms but is very skittish around its tankmates.The funny thing is s/he is the biggest one in the tank but will not get in the food "battle"during feeding time.so its basically left looking for scraps in the gravel.
Am I doing something wrong?If anyone else has a robertsoni-what do you feed yours and do they all act picky when it comes to food?
thanks in advance for any suggestions.
(I usually feed the others with shrimp pellets,small cichlid granules etc and once in a while the blood or earth worms as treats.)

 

[jgentry]

That's just how they are in a mixed cichlid community. Mine will only eat bloodworms, krill and brine shrimp. I had it in a non cichlid community for a while and it would come out and eat like a pig. With other cichlids they tend to be very skittish though.

 

[TheFishJunky]

hmmm......thats what I was afraid of.I will start breaking up my krill to smaller pieces I guess and try that as well.I actually threw the earth worm pieces in for the bichir and thats how i found out it loves worms.it was tearing em up but only if he got em b4 the others did.I havent tried brine shrimp either.do you use freeze dried or live or frozen?

 

[MrWiskers]

Give it time. I got mine is Sept and for about a month it did not each much at all. Now it is the first one to eat and eats like a pig AND it fights off the other cichlids and catfish to get to the food. They like their food to be on the botton so you need to use sinking pellets, etc. I use African Cichlid Attach and he loves it.

 

[Modest_Man]

They're a sand sifter type. Feed smaller sinking foods and they'll sift it out. They don't like eating from the surface. I've owned a couple, they're nice fish! Mine loved chopped earthworms as well.

 

[TheFishJunky]

yeah its always sifting along with the earth eaters its with and it seems like that is what it likes to do-dig for scraps.No wonder why they are labeled slow growers-they hardly get much to eat.I do drop in algae discs,shrimp pellets and sometimes sinking cichlid staple but its a little large for it to eat.thanks for the help guys.Wasn't sure if I was starving the poor thing.I got enough problems with the baby senegal bichir in there.I swear its blind.It swims right past/over food and keeps on looking.Now with the robertsoni I was thinking I had another one with anorexia

 

[Jason_S]

They're a sand sifter type. Feed smaller sinking foods and they'll sift it out. They don't like eating from the surface. I've owned a couple, they're nice fish! Mine loved chopped earthworms as well.

exactly...I've kept several robertsoni and none of them would approach the surface to eat. I had to feed combination of floating and sinking foods. They were kept wtih several other cichlids in a 150 gallon and did fine. They may take some time to adapt but mine weren't skittish. They weren't exactly what I'd call owner-responsive either though but gorgeous fish. The largest and oldest I believe was female and she got to about 5-6".