Training a Cichlid to Eat

[Cloud-9]

I have read claims of people putting a new cichlid in a tank with other fully acclimated cichlids in order to allow the new fish to "watch" the others eat. Supposedly that is done to help teach the new fish that the strange looking round stuff is food. Does this method work?

[optix]

Never heard that one, fish will learn the taste. I have never heard of needing to train a fish to eat. Its part of their survival, all animals have one purpose and thats to survive. They'll come around.

[scott]

I have never heard of that either. Sounds almost silly. I mean they have a sense of smell too.

[optix]

what part sounds silly, if you are talking about the taste part I have looked at some research sheets and fish do have a sort of "tasting" ability, ever seen a fish take in its own feces and spit it back out. They all have the ability to smell just sharks rays and eels have the better sense of it. Males even have the ability to smell an ovulating female. Literally

EDIT: sorry scott!!! lol my fault if you are reading this I just re-read your post and I read it totally wrong the first time. Sorry bout that man. I would just delete it but just in case you already read it. I thought you were saying they didn't have the ability to smell cause I just glanced at it.

[scott]

It's alright, I wasn't very clear. I meant the part about one fish having to teach another how to eat sounded a little silly. I was adding that they can smell the food in addition to taste it as you had already pointed out, anyway, cloud9 where is Reidsville?

[nboylie]

hah here is how I taught mine:

1. Put in food
2. Fish eats it!


I cant imagine having to get a fish to eat! all the fish I have ever had ate right away!

[optix]

I've noticed the only two fish I own that are pains in my *** to get to eat are my oscar and Saum. Which if you think about it, its obvious both are south american carnivores. Picky little *******s and yes I said an oscar is a picky eater, at least mine is. They LOVE wardley shrimp pellets especially the oscar I mean I shake that jar in front of the glass he gets crazy. If my girlfriend waves her hands he knows what it means and when she shakes the jar for him he literally jumps in and out of the water a few times and goes ballistic up and down the glass. You put anything else in he may eat it or he may just look at it for a sec and look at you like you are stupid for even attempting to feed it to him

[Cloud-9]

Scott: Reidsville is in the southern part of the state. It is the home of GSP (Georgia State Prison). The closest city of any size is Savannah. It is about 65 miles west of Savannah, and 4 hours south of Atlanta.

The fish is doing very well, actually. It looks very healthy. I feed it Hikari frozen brine shrimp. It doesn't take the food as it is coming down. It will let the food fall to the bottom of the tank. And then, it will eat when no one is around the tank. The fish doesn't seem to be shy though. It will eat a little bit of shrimp pellet after its been sitting in the tank for a while and gets completely soft. It will also eat the smaller wafers in Marineland's Bio-Blend food for small cichlids, but only after its been sitting there for a while. Just today, I received samples from Hikari of their Cichlid Complete. I put a few wafers in the tank. The fish swam back and forth and ignored it. I checked again about 12 hours later, and he ate them. I put some more, and he ignored them again.

I guess, Scott, that feeding him in an isolation tank would be no problem. But he will probably either learn to eat the food as it is coming down or the other cichlids will finish before he gets anything. Food will not wait for him on the bottom when he has to share a tank with other fish.

[scott]

Where do you go to buy fish down there? Do you have to drive all the way to Savanah?
I agree that it won't wait on him in a bigger tank with more fish, I think he just needs some more time to be comfortable with his surroundings. I wasn't trying to be insulting it just seemed funny and then by explaining myself I ended up sounding like a jerk.

[dave76]

my saum really seems to love the shrimp pellets as well. if he is on one side of the tank and I drop a shrimp pellet in on the other side then he takes off and in a flash has the pellet before it ever sinks, everytime. He also really seems to enjoy live earth worms, I love watching him tear into it like he was a dog playing with a toy :).

[polosniffer]

I've never really heard of anyone having to use that particular method to get fish to eat. It might make a little sense that the activty of established fish at feeding time might draw a new cichlids attention to where the food is. On a somewhat related side note, a while ago I had a red snakehead in a pond, and it would only eat live food, which was a little inconvenitent. To wean it onto meat I had to thread pieces onto the end of a string and flick them through the water to get the little bugger to lunge at them. Once they were in his mouth the rest was easy. The same trick might be relevant for larger predatory cichlids.

[Cloud-9]

I think you hit the nail on the head there. Basically, this snook is a predator/carnivore. I suspect it is wild-caught. As such, it is probably looking for meaty food that is moving or wiggling. Just yesterday, I saw it shoot across the tank to gulp down a little mosquito larvae that was wiggling in the water.

It will eat the pellets, but certainly only when it is starving. The pellets sink to the bottom, soften up, and then he will eat them throughout the day. I hate doing that because it leaves uneaten food in the tank, at least for the day. I vacuum the tank daily to remove all the uneaten pellets.