Training fish to eat pellets.

[DiverGirl82]

How do you train fish to eat pellets? I just got my first two fish and I've got them in quarantine. It's a purple firefish and a snowflake clown. They were given brine and mysis with garlic guard at the lfs. I have been giving them a mixture of mysis and pellets with garlic guard and they will only eat the mysis. I tried giving them just the pellets with garlic guard and they still wouldn't eat them. The very first time I put the pellets in the firefish tried it. He would take a pellet in then spit it back out multiple times then finally gave up on it and now he won't touch them at all. I'm thinking in his case maybe they're too big for his little mouth so I might order some smaller pellets. I'm using New Life Spectrum Thera +A and they're 1mm sinking pellets. I've seen online that it also comes in .5mm so maybe I'll try that for the firefish. The Clownfish doesn't even try them. He just ignores them completely.

Any tips? I'd really like to get them on pellets while they're in QT because it's only 10g and the mysis gets the water cloudy even though I vacuum up the left overs. Plus I want to eventually be able to use an automatic feeder when I go out of town.

 

[3dees]

they will or they won't. half my fish won't touch them so I don't feed pellets anymore. maybe your just adding too much Mysis. shouldn't cloud your tank and if your vacuuming un-eaten food I would think your overfeeding. have you tried a good flake?

 

[DiverGirl82]

I haven't tried flakes yet. I'll have to give it a try.

 

[reeferfoxx]

When I got my first fish I couldn't get them to eat anything. After a few google searches I learned that stress can make them not want to eat. Since fish can go a week without food(semi-comfortably) I would suggest not feeding them for a 3 or 4 days and then give it a shot. I didn't start feeding mine till they reacted to my presence. Anything will eat anything when hungry enough

That was my experience/$.02

 

[jadwv2210]

When I first got my clowns they did the same thing. Picked up the pellets and spit them back out. The next day they ignored them completely. I waited three days and fed again and they gobbled them down like no tomorrow. I lost one clown to I believe brooklynella in QT but the other eats the pellets every time I feed them. I'm using Hikari Marine S pellets.

 

[DiverGirl82]

Thanks everybody. I got the smaller version of the pellets and they went nuts over them last night. This morning not so much. So I guess I'll try going longer between feedings like y'all suggested.