Toni and Nemo my albino Oscar's

Chockful O Phail · Dec 6, 2017

Oscars usually aren’t picky about food for the most part. But if you’re switching a kid from candy to veggies it may take some time. Try thawing frozen bloodworms with the pellets and if she’ll take them just reduce the amount of bloodworms until it’s just pellets.

Jexnell · Dec 6, 2017

Haha I get what you are saying.
I will try the worm trick thanks!

Jexnell · Dec 11, 2017

Worm trick didn't work, she picked out all the worms and left the broken up NLS pellets alone. Showed some hope on Friday night, she ate four pellets, sadly tho none since.

Rhykiru · Dec 11, 2017

Beautiful albino oscar you have! Such a nice pearly white. I think she'll come around to the NLS eventually, especially being an oscar and all. I've switched a lot of my fish over to NLS (smaller fish with 1mm floating pellets and larger ones with the 3mm sinking pellets) and they all took awhile to actually eat it instead of mouthing it and spitting it out. I'm not sure if that might be because it's a harder food compared to flakes or hikari carnivore pellets.

Regarding freezing food, I do that with my 1/2lb of algae wafers because my dwarf shrimp take forever to go through it. I would think it works along the same lines as freezing human food to prolong it. For my other foods, I pour out a small amount into a separate container that I feed from so I don't continually expose the bigger containers to fresh oxygen. I suppose I could just feeze them too..

Jexnell · Dec 12, 2017

So I broke down today and gave her some Carnisticks.
Later in the day I noticed something very disturbing. So I told you all how my Roseline sharks eat Toni's poop. Well today I noticed that the sharks don't even waste time waiting for the poo to fall off anymore, they swoop in and take it before it falls just to get first dibs on it ......

Kittiee Katt · Dec 12, 2017

Jexnell said:
Worm trick didn't work, she picked out all the worms and left the broken up NLS pellets alone. Showed some hope on Friday night, she ate four pellets, sadly tho none since.

I think the trick is to soak the pellets in the "juice" while the worms thaw and feed only the juice soaked pellets without feeding the worms too.

kiwiraka · Dec 12, 2017

Fresh out the oven!
Although NLS seems to be the best quality food, lots of people's experience seems to be that it takes awhile to transition. Is it a texture thing or a flavour thing? Or do you think it's just because Toni loves her foodsticks?

Jexnell · Dec 12, 2017

Kittiee Katt said:
I think the trick is to soak the pellets in the "juice" while the worms thaw and feed only the juice soaked pellets without feeding the worms too.

Thanks for this tip, will try that.

kiwiraka said:
Fresh out the oven!
Although NLS seems to be the best quality food, lots of people's experience seems to be that it takes awhile to transition. Is it a texture thing or a flavour thing? Or do you think it's just because Toni loves her foodsticks?

I am thinking a little of colum A, some of colum B, and a lot of colum C.
The times she did eat it, she like really spent time chewing it, and looking at me with the WTF is this stuff look on her face.
I even tried to trick her and break up the sticks to same size as the NLS pellets and feed both to her, she spit out the NLS and ate only the Jumbo Carnisticks pieces.

It's funny cause the JDs switched with no problem, Toni has always been a its her way or no way fish maybe it will just boil down to a test of my will power vs her hunger, just I don't think it's great to be starving her while she is still a growing fish.

Jexnell · Dec 16, 2017

So the worm water trick didn't work, she sniffed it a little and swam away. So she is back on the sticks for a while, if at least to help prevent her from eating her tempoary guest.
I have some Jewels in a 29 and the bigger one tried to murderize the smaller one, I saved it in time. But that created a problem, where to put it.
The JD tank, I don't think that would work. I can't make hides small enough for the Jewel that the JDs can't get into as well with the stuff I have.
The divider I have would not work, they are small enough to pass through. So thinking that since it's a cichlid it has higher thinking and can get away from Toni better that a tetra or such.
So far so good. It has learned when it's safe to be out and how to move around the tank without gaining Toni's attetion. At times it even schools around with the sharks. Don' t get me wrong here Toni tries her best to eat the thing, but so far it has been a step ahead all the time.