I recently acquired a handsome, long ropefish. Feeding is a definite problem however. As far as I can tell he hasnt eaten any food in 4 days. My tiger barbs keep eating it all. He investigates the food (ive tried bloodworms, earthworm, mysis shrimp and plain old sinking shrimp pellets.), But then he swims off like he isnt interested and the barbs devour it. Ive tried hiding it in his favorite hiding spots, incase he changes his mind, but the barbs keep digging their way in. Its driving me nuts. I really want him to live! Is there any way anybody can think of to hide food for this guy? thanks!
help me hide food for a ropefish
- Thread starter SkeptikalScabies
- Start date
I had to start my ropes out on frozen blood worms and brine shrimp to overcome their pickiness. It's a good idea to have several of them to keep them happy.
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Might try mixing some garlic juice in his food, too.
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Ive never kept less than 3 ropefish. They were pigs that devoured everything that went into the tank, mostly tilapia. Its going to take more than a couple days for it to starve. When it gets hungry enough, it'll get to the food in time.
Try feeding at night, when the lights are off.
The Ropes are nocturnal, and might stand a better chance at getting some food while the Barbs are less active.
And as has been said above, Ropes are social fish and prefer to be with a few of their own kind.
The Ropes are nocturnal, and might stand a better chance at getting some food while the Barbs are less active.
And as has been said above, Ropes are social fish and prefer to be with a few of their own kind.
Something else to keep in mind is that ropes like polys tend to go on food strikes when they switch environments. If he's able to at least get near the food and he chooses the swim away or takes a long time to investigate it or he stays near it then swims away then he probably just doesn't want to eat right now. Give him some time to settle in and he should be eating fine. If he starts to have an interest in it, but the barbs clearly are too fast for him try feeding at night and feed through a tube. Put a pvc pipe or something in the water and drop the food into it so it automatically sinks to the bottom where the rope has the upper hand.
Lots of good advice in this thread, my two cents. As above feed at night and add another rope.
Had the same issue w/ mine. Wouldn't eat for a while, then found a store w/ live blackworms. Now he eats any worm (earth, red, black, blood, etc) but nothing else lol. He's got the cahones to play tug of war w/ a red wolf fish over an earthworm, but won't touch pellet. I'd keep trying on the worms, maybe cut the worms in half instead of smaller sections, mine will down a full grown nightcrawler whole at about 14-16 inch.
The larger pieces should be harder for the barbs to eat so they might not bother and let em sink, better yet use the PVC tube method so they'd have to go to the bottom to even check em out
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The larger pieces should be harder for the barbs to eat so they might not bother and let em sink, better yet use the PVC tube method so they'd have to go to the bottom to even check em out
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ok so thanks for all the help, the fish decided to keel over and die on the sixth day. Im still not entirely sure why that was. He seemed pretty healthy in the shop. the water parameters were pretty good, the ph was kinda high but Nothing extreme. It looked like he was having swim bladder issues because it swam around the tank upside down for a couple of hours before having what looked like a seizure and dying. I've never had that happen before with seemingly healthy fish.