Switching from live foods to frozen/flake food

[mantisfan101]

My Panduro male had white stringy poop constantly for a week now and at first I thought it was parasites but then I realized that a) it is most definitely a wild caught import and b) it is accustomed to eating live foods. I gave it nothing but live blackworms on its first few days with me and now it refuses to eat anything else, with the exception of bbs. How should I transition it to non-live foods? It ate some tubifex before but it won’t really touch it. I’ve tried flake food but it always eats them so hesitantly. It is still flaring and behaving like normal and there’s no significant weight gain or loss but it is getting skinny since it hasn’t been eating much. Should I try fasting for a day and seeing if it’ll try flake food afterwards?

 

[moricollins]

You can always try the "get it good and hungry and see if it will eat what I want it to eat" approach, very little harm will be done if it doesn't eat for a few days realistically.

 

[Polenth]

The two ways I handle food are to get them to associate the new food with things they know are food and to make it behave like food.

With wild otos, I train them to eat dried food by soaking it in vegetable juices or sticking pieces in the vegetables. In this case, you know blackworms work, so mash them up and use them to soak the new foods.

For behaviour, celestial pearl danios are the ones I've found were odd about flake, because they'd rather have live food. The simple solution was to sink it by the filter outlet. It's blasted across the tank at speed, so they chase it thinking it's alive. Pellets fall faster, so get a similar response, but I've found too many meals of those does cause constipation.

I treat all my fish for parasites when they come in. Over half of the fish show signs that they had parasites (either passing the parasites or getting the secondary infections that come from having dead parasites inside). Given that you have a wild caught fish with a symptom that often goes with parasites, it'd be prudent to get him treated. Parasites can also cause fish to be picky with food and to spit food.

 

[mantisfan101]

The two ways I handle food are to get them to associate the new food with things they know are food and to make it behave like food.

With wild otos, I train them to eat dried food by soaking it in vegetable juices or sticking pieces in the vegetables. In this case, you know blackworms work, so mash them up and use them to soak the new foods.

For behaviour, celestial pearl danios are the ones I've found were odd about flake, because they'd rather have live food. The simple solution was to sink it by the filter outlet. It's blasted across the tank at speed, so they chase it thinking it's alive. Pellets fall faster, so get a similar response, but I've found too many meals of those does cause constipation.

I treat all my fish for parasites when they come in. Over half of the fish show signs that they had parasites (either passing the parasites or getting the secondary infections that come from having dead parasites inside). Given that you have a wild caught fish with a symptom that often goes with parasites, it'd be prudent to get him treated. Parasites can also cause fish to be picky with food and to spit food.

He’s actually begun eating some bloodworms and I’m currently attempting to fast him right now. He defecated and although it was still stringy, it was now reddish brown, like normal colored fish poo. I think that maybe it has to do with stress but I’ll wait and see for now.

 

[l4nsky]

Bait and switch. You can try mixing your prepared foods in with live foods during feeding and slowly offer less and less live food during each feeding.

Thanks,
--Matt