How they eat is, they open and close their mouth and gills rapidly(it looks like heavy breathing) and they suck in food like that. Then they also will scope mouthfulls of substrate in their mouth, and past the gravel out the gills while eating any micro particles they scoped in with the gravel. When I feed them directly they will suck the food in, any other time they want it they take mouthfulls of gravel. My dragons favorate food is frozen mysis shrimp, with frozen blood worms as a close second. they will also eat shrimp pellets once they have peen softened. I am working on getting them to take tubifex