Senegal being a wuss!

[CenturyTuna]

Hello, I'm new to this place! This forums kicks ass especially this place where people can talk about bichirs.



Anyway, I got myself a Senegal Bichir two weeks ago and he seems to be doing just fine swimming around and sniffing the gravel and so fort. My problem with him/her is that he's not hunting any of the feeder guppies and minnows I have with him/her. They just swim right next to him when especially when they're hanging around his/her cave. This may sound cruel, but I have to catch the guppies and kill them and place it right in front of him/her before he/she swallows it up.



He/She is around 4 and a half inches and currently resides in a 29 gallon tank with live and plastic plants and lots of hiding places. Lives with a dozen guppies and minnows and a short tailed betta (The senegal is the ONLY fish that he gets along with to the point that they cuddle up together at times)



Is there a way to awaken his/her killer instinct? Or does the senegal need to grow up a little longer? Thanks!

 

[messiner]

instead of feeders try a good pellet or frozen food. senegals will take a wide variety of foods. anything meaty.

 

[CenturyTuna]

he/she eats the tablets for bottom feeders rather than the 10 dollar hikari carnivorous pellets I bought for him/her



I don't know if it's just my senegal, but he/she has a very lousy sense of smell. So I have to place it right infront of his/her nose. It's like i'm feeding a very stubborn child.

 

[golcondorus]

my senegal acted the same way when I first got him/her? Ive had it about a month now and its just now starting to get that bichir mean streak. For two weeks it wouldnt eat anything but pieces of silversides I fed to it off a feeding stick. Then I decided I would stop feeding the silversides to try and get it to feed. it took about a week of eating nothing but eventually its now eating shrimp pellets, and carnivore pellets, and is increasinglly interested in a bunch of danios I have in there. Why just today it was the first time I hand fed him, a bunch of bloodworms. so anyway I think it depends on the bichir and also that natural time it needs to get comfortable with its new home and the giant moving thing that feeds it

 

[BICHIR MAD]

my senegals eats anything they love large earthworms as they do deathrolls on them though i only seen it happen once?

 

[mcblack]

it depends on the bichir, they have different traits, my weeksii and delhzi don't want to even touch live feeder shrimps, they just swim with them

 

[Scorpi-O]

I think it really depends on the individual fish.
Either of our Ornates will munch down any small fish they come across in their tank.

Puma, our Senegal, won't touch any of the smaller fish in the tank he's in....
He did start chasing our small Syno cats when we first got them though.
I had to remove them for a few weeks till they got a little bigger.
Now he just ignores them like the others.

Puma's almost 6" long now.
He'll eat pellets, freeze-dried Brine shrimp cubes, most frozen foods, as well as the occassional Ghost shrimp....
but he absolutely LOVES earthworms & king-sized mealworms !!!
LOL
The biggest problem with using mealworms is the 3 Stooges- Curly, Larry & Moe, our 2.5" Clown Loaches, will steal them right outta his mouth .....
And OH BOY does that ever piss him off!!!!!
He'll chase the thief around the tank for 10 mins trying to get it back!!!

 

[djinn]

I just make sure that there are feeders and ghost shrimp available, and they seem to disappear rather quickly.
At first I fed them just beefheart and bloodworm, and they seemed to make the move to live food naturally.
My smaller senegal (3") and ornates of the same size take down fish almost half their length, which they did almost immediately after we got them.
My largest senegal (5"), which we got at a little larger size, took a little longer to eat live food (or for me to catch him in the act), and I've only seen him eat shrimp.

 

[cmersits]

the best thing if you want to watch them hunt is...
get a seperate tank for feeder fish and net one and put it in the bichir tank, that way he/she will be hungry and eagrly eat it up. Also I noticed that male bichirs don't have as much of an appetite as the females do.

 

[BMWaznboy]

i used to feed my senegal blood worms held in chopsticks while he was small and then tried to feed guppies and rosies, but they were too fast for him. now hes big enough to eat goldfish, but wont eat it right away, usually slowly hunting it down. They are more of a norturnal species, so mayb your feeders disappear over night? but then again, u did say your senegal is around 4"? kinda small to be eatting feeders yet.