She's not in freshwater, she's kept in brackish -- leaning on the heavier side. I use Instant Ocean and premix it in a couple pitchers of warm water and slowly stir it in as the tank refills during water change. I've done this since she first arrived, she's always been kept this way. And she definitely is captive bred, they gave me the breeder company from Florida but I don't know where I put the card.
The only reason I feed her goldfish is to try to round out her diet because she absolutely refuses to eat anything else other than shrimp. I tried scenting (soaking things in the bag with the shrimp), cutting things like worms and fish into fine pieces, starving, etc. She just won't eat anything outside shrimp & goldfish. She did eat a couple ghost shrimp once and did eat a couple freeze-dried krill, but then flat-out refused again. I bought that Mazuri stuff and injected it into the shrimp, and as soon as she tasted it when chewing the shrimp, she spit it out every time. I started stuffing the shrimp with Hikari carnivore pellets and she does eat it that way, but I don't think that's enough.
I'm going to do a dose of deworming to be on the safe side, but I think it is the change in substrate. Today I picked her up and brought her up near the surface to get a better look at her, and I noticed her back fins are REALLY red on the front where she uses them to dig and "walk". I think the substrate is too abrasive for her. It doesn't feel like it to me, it feels soft to me, but then again human skin is alot tougher than ray skin. I think the new substrate upset her and she's stressed by it, thus not eating. The more I think back on it, the more I started noticing the change in eating habits right about when I changed out the sand.
So what now, change back? Keep it? Find a new option? That other stuff sucked so bad in terms of clogging my filters (even after I moved the intakes farther up away from the bottom) and sticking to her, but she liked it and did really well on it.
