Food For Baby Scorpionfish
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PicassoClown04
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GK3
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He’s likely gonna be too big for those. He may go after them but my guess is they won’t interest him much and also won’t be enough. Personally, I would use small ghost shrimp and try to work him over to frozen. Can you post a picture? It took me a bit, but I got my angler over to frozen using ghost shrimp and it’s so much easier.
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alpha199
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He's a Yellowspotted Scorpionfish. So he's pretty much full sized the issue is that it is hard to acquire ghost shrimp here in Alaska. None of the Petco's seem to have them and the only real LFS is in anchorage and they don't have any.
Ghosties would be the best food for him to start out. You can try some guppies or baby mollies, but them catching fish from the water column can be tricky, I use a feeding stick and herd the guppy towards him to help them catch them. Those guys are pretty good about taking to dead food. Some tips for dead food feeding; PE Mysis(not regular mysis), mince up some various seafood(scallop, shrimp, squid, mussels, clams, salmon); use a baster to gently squirt some towards him. You can also try a feeding stick(clear rigid airline cut at a angle at feeding end) and pierce some small chunks of seafood. Bend the feeding stick towards the feeding end as not to be going straight ay his face when trying to feed. He will eat amphipods but they are kind of small, if you have access to some, they will get him by until you get him eating dead food.
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alpha199
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I managed to find some freshwater ghost shrimp at Petzoo (an expensive Alaska only pet store) so I grabbed 5. I'm gonna look into trying to buy some saltwater ghosties and just set up a shrimp tank. Ideally i'd like my scorp to be eating live as much as possible. I want it to be as close to nature for him as I can get it. So I'll have to look into finding some other live options that he would be eating in the wild.
If you have access to saltwater ghosties, that's fine, but the fresh water variety is fine also. Setting up a little tank or container with a sponge filter, fresh water is less expensive and literally no maintenance. I feed mine Omega One micro pellets. I've maintained my ghostie/guppy tank for more than 10 years and have provided these foods as staple to many lions, scorps and other predators for as long. They will eat small fish also but as I mentioned a little tricky. They don't swim so the live fish needs to swim near them for them to propel themselves into the water to catch them. I do provide guppies or small mollies to my scorp tanks(my rhino is 9" and eats pretty large mollies), and they do find a way to catch them. Sometimes I help out by herding the guppy/molly with a feeding stick towards the scorp. After a while it seems they know what I'm doing and we start to work in tandem, mollies are easier as they easily convert into saltwater. Breeding mollies(or guppies) is easy and may also be a project you might enjoy, as the the little yellowspot would need small ones. You can click my name and find all threads to see the success I have with feeding ghosties, guppies, and mollies to my predators; I currently have 11 venomous predators.
Saltwater inverts are fine, fish not so much, as salt water diseases can transfer, but fresh water diseases can not. If inverts are kept without fish in the system they are safe. Many times today sources keep fish with the inverts, and in doing so, fish diseases can hitchhike on an invert right into your system.
