Can the food you feed your fish change their behaviour?

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spatula keeper

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Dec 16, 2012
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Canada
I recently changed from feeding my gar pellets and live feeders to grocery store shrimp and they seem to have gotten very aggressive. Aggressive to the point that they have been actively trying to kill my small mouth bass and even tried to attack me when I was cleaning the tank yesterday. The gar have never tried to attack me before and have only hurt me accidentally as they tried to dodge syphon. Any ideas???
 
I could see it, could it possibly be something thats put into the grocery shrimp since a lot of them are farmed? like a certain chemical thats meant to boost the shrimps size? and it might not really be reacting to well with the fish and they are showing aggression towards it

I'm a seafood clerk at a grocery story. a ll of our shrimp is farmed.
 
Could it be that your fish are maybe not getting enough food and are still hungry causing them to be more aggressive?
 
I didn't even think of a chemical in the shrimp. I'll have to do some research into that.

I don't think it is lack of food homer as I switched them from a large once a week feeding to three jumbo tiger shrimp a day. Maybe the change in feed schedule has something to do with it?
 
^ I guess that could be a possibility as well... in certain fish, even age plays a part in their aggressive behavior as well...
 
Fat Homer said:
Could it be that your fish are maybe not getting enough food and are still hungry causing them to be more aggressive?
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Fat Homer said:
^ I guess that could be a possibility as well... in certain fish, even age plays a part in their aggressive behavior as well...
Click to expand...

I agree with Homer it has to one of these two reasons if its not a bad reaction to the shrimps.

Sent from my Comet
 
interesting... i know my aros get agressive when i feed them live food (i usually feed pellets) but IME going from pellets to MP and smelt didn't really change their behaviour
 
I believe it can change their behavior. Before my Goliath tigerfish started eating pellets, he was a murderous bastard. He killed a silver arowana, a tarpon, six silver dollars, three tinfoil barbs, a vittatus tiger fish, a pacu and several other things.

Now that he eats pellets, he's calm and lazy. After he was broke, I had a few other fish that I had trouble getting off of live, so I would occasionally put feeders in the tank. Once he got used to eating the easy to catch, readily available pellets, he became so calm and lazy he wouldn't touch feeders even if they were right in front of his nose and he hadn't eaten in two days. It was astonishing the difference it made in his temperament.
 
Chicxulub said:
I believe it can change their behavior. Before my Goliath tigerfish started eating pellets, he was a murderous bastard. He killed a silver arowana, a tarpon, six silver dollars, three tinfoil barbs, a vittatus tiger fish, a pacu and several other things.

Now that he eats pellets, he's calm and lazy. After he was broke, I had a few other fish that I had trouble getting off of live, so I would occasionally put feeders in the tank. Once he got used to eating the easy to catch, readily available pellets, he became so calm and lazy he wouldn't touch feeders even if they were right in front of his nose and he hadn't eaten in two days. It was astonishing the difference it made in his temperament.
Click to expand...

Lol what's the point of having a Tiger fish if you don't get to watch it eat live food?


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