Need some advice on a baby retic (skinny?)

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I

Indym

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Sep 3, 2007
9
0
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Malaysia
Hi guys,

Need some advice, is this baby retic skinny?

[video=youtube;XD0b0KS_oZE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD0b0KS_oZE[/video]

This is a baby 4 1/2 inch retic that i picked up a month ago. Very small, but very active and feeding well on frozen bloodworms at the LFS. For the first week, i feed frozen bloodworms exclusively 3-4 times a day to try and make sure he bulks up a bit. Then i tried live feeder shrimp, which he absolutely loved. Since introducing the shrimp into his diet plan however, i find that he's no longer that interested in bloodworms. He'll eat a bit, then ignore the rest and this can go on for days. So today i got a bit worried and got some more live shrimp for him to feast on. I'm also worried that he may be skinny.

I desperately want him to start eating a variety of foods like chopped up market shrimp, fish, cockles (he's ignored them all) but am unsure how to go about doing so. Any ideas on how i should get him on other foods?

Water Parameters :-

ammonia+nitrite 0
nitrate less than 20, wc's 30-50% every 2-3 days
ph about 8, my water supply has high ph unfortunately, something to worry about?
Tankmates - An eleven inch blind Amur sturgeon. Has a habit of running into the retic since it can't see sheeit. Very active at night (stressing out the retic?)

Thanks
 
It does not look super skinny. If you are going to work or getting your ray to eat other food it might be best to start with shrimp frozen and then thawed. Try leaving the shell on but remove the tail. If you are going to get it to eat other food you are going to have to starve it at a point. And feeding a little bit of its favorite food each day or multiple times a day will make it worse. My advice is starve from all foods but what food you want it to eat for at lest 4 days or longer if its still looking healthy. Offer what food you want it to eat often so it gets allot of contact time with that food. Your probably going to have to remove the food later and throw it away but thats the start. Also you will have to keep up on your water changes as your introducing allot of food. Keep this up for as long as possible untill it takes or seems time to need other food. When it needs to get fattening up feed it once and once only to just get it full but put some of the other food into the tank and start back on working on the other food day after day. So more or less when its really hungry and looking a bit skinny feed it just enough food so it wont starve. But all the rest of the time feed it other foods so it will get onto them. Once it takes something else dont feed the live again for at least a month. And get it fattened up again and then try another food as well.

Sent from Samsung Note 2
 
Also, be sure to cut the food up into really small pieces for a ray of this size.
 
Wonderful idea on worms, my small ones took the smallish redworms for fishing right away and eventually graduated up to Canadian night crawlers. Chopped whitefish filets and small shimp are always appreciated too.
 
DIDYSIS said:
It does not look super skinny. If you are going to work or getting your ray to eat other food it might be best to start with shrimp frozen and then thawed. Try leaving the shell on but remove the tail. If you are going to get it to eat other food you are going to have to starve it at a point. And feeding a little bit of its favorite food each day or multiple times a day will make it worse. My advice is starve from all foods but what food you want it to eat for at lest 4 days or longer if its still looking healthy. Offer what food you want it to eat often so it gets allot of contact time with that food. Your probably going to have to remove the food later and throw it away but thats the start. Also you will have to keep up on your water changes as your introducing allot of food. Keep this up for as long as possible untill it takes or seems time to need other food. When it needs to get fattening up feed it once and once only to just get it full but put some of the other food into the tank and start back on working on the other food day after day. So more or less when its really hungry and looking a bit skinny feed it just enough food so it wont starve. But all the rest of the time feed it other foods so it will get onto them. Once it takes something else dont feed the live again for at least a month. And get it fattened up again and then try another food as well.

Sent from Samsung Note 2
Click to expand...

Thanks, i'm gonna wait until the feeder shrimp run out and give it a shot.
 
Lots of small rays will eat bloodworms but they will not gain weight on them. Live ghost shrimp is what I always use to get a ray eating good, they love them. Once eating them good I will kill the live shrimp by giving them a squeeze. This gets the ray eating them dead. Once they start on dead ones start adding a couple small slivers of markets shrimp. The ray will most likely eat some market shrimp while eating the dead shrimp. Then wean the dead shrimp out and just give market. Just feed enough they will eat like 3 dead shrimp and 3-4 cut pieces. I have converted wild rays in 3-4 days using this method

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
 
FishDog said:
Lots of small rays will eat bloodworms but they will not gain weight on them. Live ghost shrimp is what I always use to get a ray eating good, they love them. Once eating them good I will kill the live shrimp by giving them a squeeze. This gets the ray eating them dead. Once they start on dead ones start adding a couple small slivers of markets shrimp. The ray will most likely eat some market shrimp while eating the dead shrimp. Then wean the dead shrimp out and just give market. Just feed enough they will eat like 3 dead shrimp and 3-4 cut pieces. I have converted wild rays in 3-4 days using this method

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info, will definitely keep in mind. I have a question though, for anyone here. Assuming you freeze your market shrimp, how do you go about thawing it? I ask because of my sturgeon. A few weeks ago i fed it some freshly bought shrimp meat that was chopped and it ate it with no problems. Then i froze the remainder and thawed it out by rinsing in tap water to quicken the process. The sturgeon hated it, only ate a bit. I'm thinking its because i rinsed it in tap and i don't want the same thing to happen when i try to get my retic on market shrimp. Thoughts?
 
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