Lyretail Anthias eating prepared foods?

EdsonReefer · Feb 11, 2018

I have a group of Lyretail Anthias in Quarantine that I am trying to get to eat pellet and flake. Has anyone got theirs to do this? So far they like the NLS flake, but the pellets they spit out. I have tried soaking the flake and pellets in a garlic/mysis juice combo and they are eating more of the flakes.

leepink23 · Feb 11, 2018

Mine eat pellets, they spit them out at first but now love them. I feed crossover pellets. They really love reef frenzy as well

JimmyV · Feb 11, 2018

Mine will not touch flake or pellets. they will only eat Mysis and brine with spirulina.

eatbreakfast · Feb 12, 2018

I haven't had much trouble getting lyretails to take pellets.

reefndude · Feb 12, 2018

Mine won't touch it. I didn't really try to get them to eat flake or pellets. Only feed it to the tank because one clown seems to prefer it

ca1ore · Feb 12, 2018

Some do some don't - those that do can take a while to take to it.

Canan · Feb 12, 2018

I have 2 lyretails; both are eating the frozen food however only one is eating the flakes, the other just spits the flake out.

EdsonReefer · Feb 12, 2018

I gave my youngest a small amount of flake to feed them and now all of them are eating it. I will also try to get them to eat pellets.

Chuck Lawson · Feb 12, 2018

Mine aren't terribly thrilled with the NLS pellets, but they really like the PE Mysis pellets. Surprising to me, they also seem to really like flake; I'd started them off on Rods and Reef Frenzy, and happened to drop in a bit of flake one time, and they went for it like it was going out of style. As a result, I've added a feeding of Prime Reef or Formula Two flakes every day.

JJ Ocean · Feb 12, 2018

My lyretails it both, but they started with flake and took a while to eat pellets. They also only eat the smaller pellets.

When converting them to pellets, I chop up thawed mysis with a razor blade and mix the pellets into the mysis. I let it sit 5 minutes, then put the whole mix into the tank. Over time, reduce the amount of mysis in the mix until you don't add any mysis at all.

EdsonReefer · Feb 12, 2018

Well I experimented a little and coated the NLS pellets in Garlic and PolyLab Polp-Booster as my fish go nuts when I put it in the water before I feed my corals. Well the Anthias each ate 2-3 pellets presented this way.

Stigigemla · Feb 14, 2018

They have a very narrow throat. I start with cyclops the first week and then they begin to eat flakes. Mysis is not a good ideer to start with because they dont get much in the stomach that way. They only take one, chew on it a while and then spit it out because it is to big to swallow. And then they take another. Cyclops is small but they can take a few each second so that is much more food.
In half a year or so they will be able to swallow mysis. They apparantly can train the throat to get wider.

Pmj · Feb 14, 2018

As with most fish, you just have to keep trying to feed them it every day while still feeding what they want as well. My lyretail devours everything and I recently got my leopard wrasse eating NLS & flakes, when it would only eat live brine or Nutramar ova. It's very rewarding when they finally figure out it's food.

eatbreakfast · Feb 14, 2018

Stigigemla said:
They have a very narrow throat. I start with cyclops the first week and then they begin to eat flakes. Mysis is not a good ideer to start with because they dont get much in the stomach that way. They only take one, chew on it a while and then spit it out because it is to big to swallow. And then they take another. Cyclops is small but they can take a few each second so that is much more food.
In half a year or so they will be able to swallow mysis. They apparantly can train the throat to get wider.

I haven't found this to be true at all with lyretails. That spitting out is due to their pharyngeal teeth, so larger items will have that happen.
If anything i have found that lyretails prefer mysis to cyclops, whereas with smaller anthias it is vice versa.

Feeding anthias a variety of frozen foods and feeding frequently gets them conditioned to associate your arrival with food, and relatively quickly will take any food items that hit the water.

Kyl · Feb 14, 2018

When I had my lyretail pair, they would literally eat anything put in the tank. They'd even hang around the tomini when he would pick at the nori clip and catch any pieces he ripped off that floated away.

dgragg · Feb 14, 2018

I have 4 Lyretails a Sunburst and a Disbar. They all eat Hikari Marine S pellets like a four year old eats cotton candy at the fair.

shred5 · Feb 14, 2018

I have never had a issue with Lyretail Anthias eating flake or pellets..
Start with frozen food and start mixing in some flake and pellet. After a while just soak the pellets or flake in the juice from the frozen food especially pellets they need to be softened sometime. Eventually no issues with just pellet or flake.. also pellets seend to be small, anthias feed on plankton and food needs to be small.
I use this method for most anthias.

Stigigemla · Feb 17, 2018

I buy them 6-8 cm because i dont want to many males.
And yes when they have began to eat flakes they eat almost everything.

steamman · Sep 29, 2018

Kyl said:
When I had my lyretail pair, they would literally eat anything put in the tank. They'd even hang around the tomini when he would pick at the nori clip and catch any pieces he ripped off that floated away.

I have three Lyretail Anthias I saw them eating pieces of Romaine lettuce that my tangs bite off and drop today. First time I noticed they eat lettuce. I am not sure if they bite off pieces themselves when the Tangs are finished. I feed them frozen mysis and Cyclopeeze. Seems they prefer smaller mysis over the larger pieces. When the mysis is gone they eat the Cyclopeeze. I can't get them to eat flake or pellets yet. I do mix it all up but they just spit the flake and pellets right back out. I have had them about two months now.

leepink23 · Sep 29, 2018

steamman said:
I have three Lyretail Anthias I saw them eating pieces of Romaine lettuce that my tangs bite off and drop today. First time I noticed they eat lettuce. I am not sure if they bite off pieces themselves when the Tangs are finished. I feed them frozen mysis and Cyclopeeze. Seems they prefer smaller mysis over the larger pieces. When the mysis is gone they eat the Cyclopeeze. I can't get them to eat flake or pellets yet. I do mix it all up but they just spit the flake and pellets right back out. I have had them about two months now.

Mine will eat Nori from my tang.