My Leichardti barely eats =(

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ethnics

ethnics

Piranha
MFK Member
Aug 18, 2006
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SouthEast SD
when i first brought this dude home last month, he was a lil scavenger from the beginning. eatin like a mad man on freeze dried plankton right after i acclimated him. so i went to the store n got him some freeze dried krill since the plankton was so small compared to him n i had to feed so much of it. he took to that stuff just as easily. ate tons daily for the first week or 2, but now i throw in food, n he only nibbles n spits. then dont eat. tried pellets, nibble n spits, market shrimp, nibbles n spits. this has been on going for atleast 2 weeks now. i have now removed him from my 150gal tank n put him in my 60gal since its smaller so i can concentrate more on getting this guy on something... i really dont wanna feed feeders but is that my only option? what caused him to stop :( ive tried a variety of food since ive had him cuz i dont want him stuck on 1 kinda food. but now he wont even really eat anything. he has grown since i got him, atleast a half inch to an inch but he aint gettin fat like i want him to be

suggestions?
 
thats really strange, since he was eating and just stopped. live crickets may work.
 
little update on his eating habbits:

this guy is strange. sometimes he takes floating fd plankton and sometimes he jus chews n spits. 1 thing for sure which i didnt wanna do, is he eats guppies like crazy. i did NOT wanna do this as i noticed with tongs is it got very aggressive after it had a taste of feeders but i did not want this guy dieing on me.

30guppies in 1 feeding. how can i get this darn fish to eat something else. should i jus feed it guppies til its bigger, then try starving it for a few weeks til it eats something else? i dont wanna have to feed him live feeders his whole life.
 
stave him for one week the feed what you want him to eat

he ate well for the 1st few weeks as he was starved before shipping to the shop and the shop probably wasnt feeding it great

dont give in if you give in and keep giving him feeders then thats all he will eat

a good strong healthy aro can go 1 month easy without food
 
1 month without eating at the size of 6"? he went 3 days without eating and turned into a paper thin arowana... ill try waiting a few days then offer what i want n see what happens. thanks for the tip

i kno aros in general can go a while without eating but this is a 6" speciman were talking about.
 
ethnics - have you tried a cut up bite sized piece of market shrimp?
 
i tried that the first few weeks. he went down n picked it up. chew'd n chew'd then spit it out. then never touched it again. ill try those again maybe in a few days since he cleared out all the guppies i threw in 2 days ago. maybe ill try different foods this weekend
 
My Jardini and Black did this for a while. I used to feed them unpeeled whole market shrimp but one day began doing what your fish is doing. I think aros are vulnerable to injuring their tongue (a unique feature other fish do not have) while gulping & chewing large or coarse food. Mine never really recovered to their original eating habit but try to be easy on the food you give. Small but relatively firm (cut out market shrimps) food worked for me--avoid smelts (they will ruin the water quality as they laborously chew on it) or hard pellets.

Good luck.
 
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