Bichirs completely refusing pellets
- Thread starter SpecialKay
- Start date
Well, Bichirs don't seem to want pellets even after 4 days of starving. I ended up buying some vitamin supplements to put with the meaty foods.
I've tried up to 4 days so far, still no dice with the pellets.
I've tried up to 4 days so far, still no dice with the pellets.
I've had a bichir starve up to 6 months before eating pellets, but it was about 20". My friend's bichir starved for 2 years before it ate pellets, his fish was about 28" though.
Correction, my friend's fish didn't eat anything he offered for 2 years (meaty food included). But yeah they definitely lost some weight but not extremely thin. Slender side. Yah, your small bichir should switch over in a week or 2 especially since they are captive bred.
Well... starving my bichirs for a week have made most of them willing to eat pellets, except for the hyper aggressive female plat. She ended up ripping the head off one of my prized 6 inch van heurni rainbows in the middle of the fast, but didn't even eat him or the pellets. She is also now refusing market shrimp, and will only eat swai or tilapia.
This is an interesting dilemma . I see a couple of things possibly going on here. I see the need to perhaps overfeed, being that you have to get enough food past the rainbows to get to the bichirs. If this is the case, the rainbows could be following the food down the water column, and intimidating the bichirs off of the food if the rainbows are aggressively feeding off the bottom. If the bichirs seem to only want natural foods, it's more than likely that the natural foods just appeal more to their instinctive tastes. If we were to take the rainbows out of the equation, I would alternate a weekly diet of cut fish, earth worms, jumbo bloodworms, and jumbo mysis shrimp, every other day. It's also good to give them an occasional treat of beef heart as well, maybe one feeding a month. Don't give them more than they will eat in 5 to 10 minutes. Don't worry about the slower eaters in the group. it won't take them long to figure out that they need to be in the frenzy if they want to eat. It's also a good idea to feed them at the same time of day at every feeding. They will eventually cue into your actions to know when it's time to eat. This will also help with the water quality, as everything will be eaten, preventing excess nutrients from becoming much of a problem.
Thanks for the input, you hit on some good points!
My bichirs did end up rejecting the pellets again, so I now mostly feed them vitachem soaked frozen. I also got a couple more bichirs and a catfish, so now it's even easier to overfeed. However, I did develop solutions to my problems.
In regards to feeding: I always feed the rainbows first with a mixture of floating pellets/mysis/NLS flakes, giving them around 5 minutes to fill up. Then I feed the bichirs with Tilapia/Swai/Market Shrimp/Bloodworms soaked in vitachem, and let them eat for 10 minutes. Last, I throw down some sinking pellets for my catfish.
For nitrates: I covered the back and sides of the tank with walls of lucky bamboo, which soak up all the nitrates from overfeeding and then some.
