Picky...slooooooow eating fish! Tips for feeding these fish?

[sfin52]

I leave the power heads on. It seems to increase the feeding response. @Katrina71 has suggested multiple times.

 

[BourbonLegend]

I have a lubbox wrasse that will always aim for the biggest chunk of food around only to take it to its special battering rock where he will bash the food until it can fit the pieces into his mouth. While it is entertaining to watch it is fairly time consuming, and after all of the efforts of murdering its already dead food the other fish have depleted what was fed. I feed a variety of frozen and regardless of whats being fed its going to go for the biggest hardest to manage chunk every time. All things considered, it just takes multiple food applications and the wrasse is fat and happy.

 

[BourbonLegend]

Our Hawaiian cleaner wrasse causes me to lose sleep at night. Pickiest little eater... It just started to get it to feed on a mixture of oysterfeast, phytofest, mysis, cyclopods, spiralina, benepets and crushed flakes and just for good measure I've seeded the tank with live rodifers and tigerpods. Today I finally noticed it eating the cyclopods and flakes and it's constantly pecking at the rocks and wall. The other fish and CuC love it, it's like a buffet of foods, we also just added a clam and the skimmer is going nuts to combat the bioload.

Try baby brine. My cleaner goes crazy for them. Dump the brine and watch the wrasse connect the dots rapidly!

 

[725196]

I started using EZ Masstick and almost everything in the tank eats it. Even my mandarin will eat the stuff the messier eaters make fall off. It is an all around good food for picky eaters.

 

[ca1ore]

For me, running new fish through QT is as much about eating as it is disease. It’s asking a lot of a new fish, likely starved on its journey to you, to deal with the hazing it will get in the new display and also get enough to eat. I make sure all new fish are eating aggressively and have achieved a healthy weight before adding to the display. Some never get there. A timid fish won’t survive in my tank.

 

[KingTideCorals]

Absolutely I do!! This Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse was no easy task to get to eat! Lots of helicopter reefing LOL!

Heres a thread where I get more in depth!

Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse

Hello Reefers! Reaching out because I myself just picked up a Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse at my LFS for 60bucks?!? Saw it swimming in a tank with with a single other cleaner wrasse and I just felt that I needed to take it home. I have done some research about them previously, but here is what we...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[living_tribunal]

100% I have the worlds laziest pipe fish. I’ve had him for over a year and he refuses to eat anything other than hand fed frozen cyclops. He doesn’t hunt or scavenge for pods. He just sits in front of the feeder waiting for cyclops.

 

[scabbedwings616]

my foxface is picky sometimes. Sometimes he will eat the romaine lettuce in the tank, other days he doesn’t eat anything and is grazing.

 

[Suohhen]

I think the best way to deal with this issue is to vary the type of food and speed of release. There is a huge difference between large bits of food like Okanagan mysis or formula one vs Hikari Mysis which has a million little tiny shrimp thus the big fat fish don't get to hog as much but also might leave those fatties with less food than they need hence the utility in generally mixing up the buffet. Speed of release can also help make sure everyone gets enough in so far as slower makes sure less gets in the rocks but faster can let more food get by the sharks on the top and down to the bottom feeders.

 

[Steph72]

This little one is a very picky eater, he won’t touch flakes or pellets. I offer a large variety of frozen food along with bits of Nori soaked in Selcon. It’s probably overkill but he always finds something to eat when he has a lot of choices!

 

[EakTheFreak]

I’m shocked no one has mentioned mandarin goby. I raised mine in QT on cultured white worms I raised. He gained weight and I slowly transitioned him to frozen LRS & Hik. mysis shrimp.

I still rarely see him eating the frozen in my DT now but he is fatter than ever. He has to compete with the following:
• 3 BLUE STAR LEOPARD WRASSES
• 3 Purple Firefish
• 2 Bimaculatus Anthias
• 2 Black Mollies
• 2 Designer Clownfish
• 1 Magnificent Foxface
• 1 Yellow Eye Kole Tang
• 1 Coral Beauty

That’s some competition for food!!

 

[WallyB]

While this doesn't really answer your question, I think it best to put fish in a tank that have similar feeding aggression. Really timid fish just generally don't fare well with more aggressive eaters. With that said, it can be done, it just takes more work. For instance I have a 125 gallon tank full of very active eaters, then I have a court jester gogy who is very passive. The court Jester Goby tends to hang near his hidey hole on the right side of the tank, so I feed the food on the left side of the tank and all of the other fish go over there, then I quickly a little of the gobies preferred food while the rest of the gang it not looking. And this allows the goby to get his.

I actually agree with @Miller535, Slow Eatting fish, should kept with their own, for long term Survival.

It takes a lot of effort to feed a slow eatting fish when tank has faster eatting inhabitants.
Plenty of good advice to mitigate the problem, but in the long term that slow eatting fish will fall behind.

You can't possibly spend the time an effort to keep on top of a single or few slow eaters.
Over time you'll get busy/distracted like I did.

I had this beautiful FatHead Sunburst Anthias.

Considering his size and large mouth, he would peck at smallest of food pieces and eat slow.
To make things worse, he would alway pause just as he was going to take a bite.
Then a fish would swoop by and snatch the food right from under his nose.

I really did everything possible to ensure he would get his fair share of food. (Lots of the ideas mentioned)
It appeared like he was getting enough (but alway much less than other fish).
After a year+ he eventually died. (Not from Disease, not from being attacked...I assume he starved slowly).

I missed him for his spectacular beauty and when chance came, got a pair.
I stopped just before putting them back into the same Agressive Eating Tank.
(I didn't want to loose two Sunburst again, a year from that point).....

INSTEAD...They went into the same system, but into an empty Refuge Section of Sump.

I thought I would fatten them up for a few months, before the transfer.
But they are a pair, and enjoy their little cozy space. The bigger one is the dominant one, but no major fights.
Sunburst Anthias don't swim much, and it's perfect.
They will just stay there, since they eat all they want (slowly), and are getting healthier, more colorful, and bigger.

 

[hikermike]

I had a little yellow shrimp goby too that wouldn't eat either...didn't see it for more than a year...noww it's started to come out and spends time around a burrow shared with two convict gobies and a lawnmower blenny. It's twice as big and fat. Obviously it's been eating. so if your fish isn't shrinking away, assume it's feeding behind your back! I had a tiny yellow clown goby that wouldn't eat until I put some blood worms in the tank and boy did it ever tear into them even though they were bigger than him! I find blood worms encourage a lot of new fish to eat. Also prefeed the tank with copepods or rotifers first to stimulate them (frozen).

 

[KaidenC]

All of my fish are absolute Hawgs