Starving my Jardini

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Gshock;4067943; said:
This makes no sense at all. The more food the aro has in storage equals to the longer it goes without being hungry. How would giving it more food, make it more hungry. This only leads to you having to starve LONGER to get hungry making this idea a big waste of your time. This is equivalent to saying that you will be more hungry at lunch if you were to stuff yourself during breakfast...


Well if you're going to dismiss something that works without trying it, fair enough. But if you think about it it makes perfect sense. If a fish is USED TO eating A LOT it has a big stomach, as stomachs are stretchable. The more you eat, the more you NEED to eat to feel full. So you have a lot of food in your big stomach, and from that point on, as it is all being digested and your stomach starts to get smaller again (emptier) you start to feel hungry, and as it gets smaller and smaller, you feel hungrier and hungrier. So someone who IS USED TO eating a lot will get a lot hungrier between meals. Yes?

Gshock;4067943; said:
...and they obviously know pellets are food if they are attempting to eat them and are chewing them up into peices, ...

Yeah they try them, chew them up a bit to see if they're edible, then spit them out. Food...obviously.

Gshock;4067943; said:
... along with the fact that its quite common where some aros just come in already willing to eat pellets...

...so that means ALL Arows see pellets as food ?
 
blackghostuk;4069800; said:
Well if you're going to dismiss something that works without trying it, fair enough. But if you think about it it makes perfect sense. If a fish is USED TO eating A LOT it has a big stomach, as stomachs are stretchable. The more you eat, the more you NEED to eat to feel full. So you have a lot of food in your big stomach, and from that point on, as it is all being digested and your stomach starts to get smaller again (emptier) you start to feel hungry, and as it gets smaller and smaller, you feel hungrier and hungrier. So someone who IS USED TO eating a lot will get a lot hungrier between meals. Yes?

The more you have in your stomach, the longer its going to take you to get hungry. It allows you to eat more when you are eating, but it doesn't necessarily make you hungry faster...Your idea is trying to prevent starving, but the only way for your method to work is to starve until your aro gets hungry. All your method does is prolong the time it takes for your aro to get hungry, making it an even longer starving period, completely useless.

Yeah they try them, chew them up a bit to see if they're edible, then spit them out. Food...obviously.

If they're trying them, they obviously know its edible. I dont see them trying to bite the small knob of my water change hose...


...so that means ALL Arows see pellets as food ?

I would assume that fish can "smell" food, hence why some fishermen decide to spray scents on their lures. If the food smells THAT fishy, i don't see how they would differentiate it from, lets say, fish fillets.
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arodini;4063643; said:
OP, don't mean to steal your thread, but I think it doesn't make sense to start another thread for the same subject... I'm really trying to keep it up with my own jar's diet training right now. He's 18" and has never wanted to even look at pellets/sticks before. Only been fed with raw shrimps/fish as staple with pho noodles, chicken fillets, worms and home bred guppies as treats. He's been offered sticks only for the past 16 days, but he's still not eating them. Only once last week when he swallowed one stick by accident I think before he had a chance to spit it out LOL. It's so bad for me to see him being hungry, especially when he follows me around when I get near the tank.

He shows no sign of stress, behaves normally except being hungry. One time I saw him trying to scoop up a scale of the 11" bala shark from the bottom to eat it, but still not looking at the damn sticks!!!

I've never been a fan of starving my fish at all, especially my prized jardini. But I recently thought he's big enough so give it one more try. I'm not sure how much longer I could keep this up before I give in. I plan on giving it another week, or maximum 10 more days. The damn fish is so stubborn!!!!!!


Damn, I gave in last night, the 27th day!!! He's been chewing the sticks into pieces and spitting them out, but not sure if he had swallowed any at all. I'd dropped in one stick at a time, three times a day to really send a message that that's all he's going to get. Anyway, I was planning to be patient and brave this time until last night when I discovered that the bottom tip of one of the two thermometers (the black colored tip - mercury?) was missing and I couldn't find it in the bare bottom tank! Further more, the jar's head (right behind the top lip, next to the right nostril) had some scratches. I then said hell with this training man, the fish is doing more self damages well before I could get the wanted result. Really ridiculous! That's it. I'm done with pellet training on this jar.

I threw in two medium shrimps with shell on (tail spike removed - details details!) and he was going crazy. I could really tell that he was much much happier....and me too :grinno:
 
Don't know if it works for jar's (the only jar i've had came loving pellets) but both the silvers i've had didn't do pellets when i got them. I try and put food in everyday, either pellets or something meaty for the catfish. To start with the aro's would only eat the meat, but with food going in everyday and seeing the other fish just go nuts for pellets on pellet days they soon got the idea as they weren't getting meat those days and started on the pellets too. Current silver will eat anything now.
 
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