Two Red Bay Snooks arriving tomorrow?

[Lollum96]

I've never kept the species but would hazard a guess that at that size they are very piscivorous. As much as I prefer to avoid the use of live feeders, I think you should be less concerned with getting them "hooked" on feeders...and should concentrate on getting them hooked on food!

I would think they would be likely to take live feeder fish, and once they are eating regularly and have put on some weight, you can then turn your thoughts to weaning them onto non-living foods. This, of course, means using quaratined or home-bred feeders, and then leaving them alone with the food fish...no prodding, tweezing, jumping around in front of the tank, herding the feeders with nets, etc.

If you wait too long and allow them to become too skinny, they will eventually pass the point of no return, at which point they will never begin feeding and will simply waste away.

Well the feeders done the trick. They refused to eat my homebred feeders which where 1-2cm long. So as a last resort I thrown some larger goldfish in. They devoured 8 X 6cm goldfish in less than 5 minutes with me stood in front of the tank!

And that leaves me slightly screwed. Because that single meal cost me £20.

We don't really have feeders in the UK.

 

[Lollum96]

There should be no problem at all feeding them pellets. They'll come out more, especially with dithers like tin foil barbs or silver dollars.

Well unfortunately these two Snooks had no interest in pellets. They refused prawns, fish fillet pieces, pellets (both sinking and floating), blood worms (both live and frozen), live river shrimp, earthworms, frozen whitebait and literally more. They even refused small 1-2cm feeders.

The only thing they eventually taken was 6cm goldfish. As soon as they hit the water it was a feeding frenzy.

 

[jjohnwm]

Okay, so next time don't toss in a bunch of feeders and just stand there. Instead, get them accustomed to having one or two tossed in at a time; they will quickly learn to grab them the instant they hit the water. At that point, try tossing in a freshly-killed or frozen/thawed feeder with a live one...then just one or two non-living ones. You will quickly get to the point where they hit whatever you throw in; frozen, fillets, pellets, etc. Then you're golden; try to maintain some degree of variety in their diet, not only for nutritional completeness but also to keep them from getting fixated on one particular food, which can be a problem if that item becomes unavailable for some reason.

Again, I'm not a snook keeper, but I have kept a fairly large variety of predatory fish over the years and this training method is virtually fool-proof with even the toughest-to-satisfy live-food-only diehards. Cichlids are, in general, some of the easiest fish to pellet train. People who claim to be unable to pellet-train their fish...cichlids or otherwise...are usually just dropping in some unfamiliar inert pellet and then standing their wringing their hands when the fish don't recognize it as food. Even that "method" will work a lot of the time, but sometimes you just need to outsmart them. It shouldn't be difficult; they're fish.

Note that these 20cm snook completely ignored your 1-2cm fish offerings...but smashed feeders that were several times that size. They obviously want big food, so don't waste your time and money offering them bloodworms. You should be able to get them onto Massivore or floating Carnivore Sticks within a few days or perhaps a week. Good luck!