Enough Baby-sitting!!!

[Spiritofthesoul]

When my eyes first meet the bichir at my LFS, it was feeding time. The owner just threw a handfull of feeders and almost instantaneously, the bunch of bichirs went on the attack. It was like a feeding frenzy of sharks. At the time I knew I just boarded the bichir addiction train.

3 years down the road, I finally have the capital to start my own bichir tank. I got a sen, ornate and del currently. After reading much positive feedback on Hikari's sinking pellet here, I decided that will be their staple food.

Don't get me wrong, My bichirs absolutely love those sinking pellets (+1 point to Hikari). But they are now too used to food being served to them. No longer were they the active fishes which patrol the tank as I saw 3 years back then in the LFS. Now they would all just lie on the bottom, expecting food to sink down every 8pm each day.

Thats when I decide to add more variety in their diet. I look through all the floating options and decided on FD mealworms. However, only my sen would swim up to the surface to grab some. The del and ornate still lie at the bottom expecting pellets to fall from the sky.

How do you make those lazy bums take in floating food?

 

[GarNiac]

it takes time for them to get used with new food in the tank since they are bottom dwellers. They will eventually eat those food, just need sometimes and patiences. Mine took around 3 weeks or more before they started eating floating pellets I gave them. Here where I live, there is no sinking pellets available in the market.

 

[Divasen]

Give them some live feeders now again that will make them work for there food. I try to do this atleast once a month with my polys, If you were only feeding them live im sure they would be a little more active but aswe no that this is not a good diet for them. polys are bottom dwelling fish and like or not for the most part of the day they will just lie there.I feed my polys massivore as there staple diet with hake,prawns and what ever else fish i can find. My polys are also not too active but its the way they are

 

[Spiritofthesoul]

Ok sorry about that, I was pretty pissed as I gave up my lunch $ to buy those mealworms for them and they ignored it.

I tried burying some of the mealworms in the substrate, does that help? They still ain't touching it.

 

[JamesF]

He may just not want mealworms. Personally, I'd try krill.

 

[Spiritofthesoul]

Tried krill, cause a massive stink. You are just in time for an epic fail. The del was going for the buried mealworms when the sen swim by, the body knock and dislocated the mealworm from the gravel...

mealworm floats back up and the delhezi went back to his cave.

 

[JamesF]

Have you ever tried hand feeding them?

 

[Spiritofthesoul]

If they won't even eat it from the bottom, I doubt handfeeding would be any good.

Although only my sen allows me to handfeed the mealworms

 

[Sidrock]

He may just not want mealworms. Personally, I'd try krill.

This has worked for me although for fresh jumbo krill. Other stuff my 11-12" Endli likes are (fresh) Prawns to add to the stable of Hikari Cichlid Gold (Sinking).

However, this is only input related to the variety-in-diet aspect not the inactivity part.

My Endlis are considerably active at least during feeding time (One of which is a nearly 1ft and other is 5" and are in different tank.)

Good luck,

SId

 

[NCStateFisher]

i'd throw in about 15 ghost shrimp and not feed em until they start going after the shrimp, they won't starve themselves they'll stop being lazy eventually