Hey guys I have a wild kelberi peacock bass that's about 8" now, I bought him about a month ago at 7". Right now I feed him live shiners that are wild caught and quarantined in two different tanks. Live shiners at the moment is his staple because I'm afraid it will be impossible to get him onto pellets. The guy I bought him from was a universally more experienced fish keeper than me and has had years of experience with kelberis and has had this one ever since it was 3". He owns a 400 gallon with 3 breeding BD rays as well. And even he couldn't get him onto pellets. So anyways I want to know if he could get malnutrition off of live food? He hasn't been showing any colours really since I got him but he was eating fine. He also eats whole night-crawlers is that any more healthy or cleaner? The original owner had him on a diet of worms anyways. And also one last question. Would he eat a stingray half his length in disc width if I didn't feed him for a week? Because I go on 1-3 vacations a week long every year during the summer and I don't want him to starve or eat a stingray that I was thinking of getting soon. CAN ANYONE HELP???
LIVE FOOD OK FOR PEACOCK BASS??? URGENT!
- Thread starter Mihajlo525
- Start date
Bass aren't that hard to get on pellets IMO. But if you can't get him to eat them then try tilapia or shrimp. And I highly doubt that he will eat the stingray.
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This bass is a very picky bass, even when i get him to accidentally swallow some pellets (I wave a shiner on the surface of the water and I throw pellets as soon as he takes it) he just spits them back out. Would earthworms produce any less ammonia than shiners or have any extra health benefit? Is there any sort of fish like food I can get him onto that I can put in an automatic feeder? And are you sure he wouldn't go after a ray even when staved for a week? I've heard horror stories of Pbass eating tank-mates over half their size when they got really hungry. THANKS!!
I gutload them off of blood worms right now, but do earthworms have any more of a nutritional benefit than shiners? Or are do they release any more ammonia? And also how do you add this vita-chem, it's a liquid so is it a supplement you add before feeding or does it act as a medicine for lateral line disease? Thanks!
You're better off gut-loading with a quality flake or granules than with worms. There's some good protein available in the worms but, commercially sourced worms are purged for shipping and during container storage and lose many of the nutrients they contained at their collection point. The shiners contain enough protein for the PB. Feeding the shiners vitamin soaked flakes will add missing nutrients to round out the predator's diet.
If your dead set on getting him onto pellets starvation is key. Get him onto shrimp first then start stuffing the shrimp with pellets. After a few weeks of stuffed shrimp try starving him with offering pellets only but don't go longer than 2 weeks. You'll have best luck with massivore pellets. I've never had a bass that wouldn't take massivore. At 8" your totally safe starving for 2 weeks. My adult bass only get 1 large feeding per week and do fine off it
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Itsounds like he is hitting the food the second that it hits the water so thatwill help you down the road. You will want to get him off of live just todiversify his diet and it’s a pain in the neck getting live all the time. Startoff by taking your shiners and cutting them in half and feeding him those. Oncehe takes those regularly, then switch to tilapia, shrimp or other cutfish. Once he starts eating all those,start stuffing them with pellets. After a while you can slowly let the pelletssit in the juices from the cut fish and try to feed them to him. Sooner orlater he will start to eat the pellets. It also helps if there are other fishin the tank that will spark some competitiveness and also “teach” him that thepellets are food.
^ this
I dont feed my bass pellets but they eat anything i throw in the water. there is one tried and true way to train them...
1: Throw one feeder in at a time, and wait until that one is caught and eaten before adding another. this will teach them to hover at the surface awaiting morsels.
2: Switch to freshly dead feeders (just freeze them first and rethaw all the way or thwack them on the counter) and feed him one live, then a dead, then one live then two dead (one at a time still) until he eats the dead ones every time.
3: Cut the dead feeders in half first, then feed the same way.
4: switch to a different prepared food (shrimp, smelt, tilapia etc) via the same method that you used to switch to dead feeders.
with this method little to no starvation is required and it works pretty universally. i have NEVER, in ten years of cichla keeping, had a bass refuse to switch off live this way. some bass wont ever switch to pellets tho, or will eat them but not as vigorously as the frozen food and thats why i stay with the frozen, cheaper, more varied and they eat more of it
