Guess I'm kinda different. I believe in teacher fish. I used dats. The reasoning behind is the fact that they charge the surface very quickly from the bottom of the tank. This ALWAYS got the payara's attention. Do I believe this is the sole reason all my payara eat NO live whatsoever? No, but do I think it helped? Yes. After about a month with dats the rhaphs began eating freeze dried krill. I had been trying to get them to eat it for about 3 months while it was just the 3 Rhaphs in the tank. It seemed like they saw the dats and took to it. Once they started then the Scombs took to it. In my experience the Tats were easiest to get off live. But then again I had a shoal of 5. My Armatus actually took the longest, about 1.5 months. Maybe size had something to do with this as it was a mere 3 inches when I got it.
In my experience the best "trick" is to simply throw freeze dried krill in the h.o.b. filter output. Ty to set the tank up with a lot of surface agitation......a few powerheads, as many h.o.b. filters as possible......Along with H.O.B. filters I also use canisters that dump into a spray bar hung right across the back of the tank. The more the krill dances the more appealing it looks. Once they start on krill it's easy. My armatus will actually accept more differnt kinds of food (shrimp, scallops, smelt, krill, nightcrawlers, silversides) then it will turn down (sea food like squid and octo)......when its hungry (kept with rays and gets fed a lot). This all could be due to the fact it was raised with other Payara that showed it that there is such a thing as food besides feeders.....OR I could be getting an overactive imagination from overexposure to fish poop resulting in me thinking that fish are way smarter than they really are.. Maybe I'm just friggin nuts.....I don't know.
