Trouble, feeding, fish

Hi - sorry for the long post but I need help.
I have a 29 gal fowlr tank.
Everything is sort of ok, but I am still having issues feeding my fish.
I have a cleaner shrimp who will eat just about anything that crosses his path, so him I am not too worried about. But, I also have 2 ocellaris clowns and 2 very small neon goby's that are hardly eating. My nitrates are rising a bit (20ppm) because I am putting in too much food I think, just trying to get them to eat, but once the food gets to the bottom, the fish don't bother with it. I have stuff called cyclopeeze which is very small, and I also just bought garlic marine pellets, but the clowns spit them out, and the goby's never see them. Maybe they are eating at night?
Should I try to grind up the food into almost a powder? Maybe then it will float and they can eat? I tried brine and mysis also but only the shrimp grabs that, and too much shrimp will cause nitrate rise anyway. Nitrates are at 20 and all other perameters are perfect, but I am worried that the nitrates will continue to climb with all this uneaten food. Any thoughts? Thanks!

Sonicblast12 said:

How long have you had the fish, and how long have they displayed this behavior?

A couple of things you could try. The first thing I would do is a decent sized water change to cut the nitrates in half, then don't feed for a day or two. The increase in water quality and increase in hunger may spur the fish to eat.

Something else that works for picky eaters...get some flake food, a small cup of tank water and add garlic powder to the mixture. Mix it all together and let it sit for a couple hours, then try feeding that. If that doesn't work, thaw out some high quality frozen food in tank water and see if they eat. If they do, slowly mix in the food you want them to eat with the frozen over a period of several days before switching over.

Good luck.

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Thanks for the input.
I got the clowns about a month ago and they have always been this way. The Goby's are in there only 3 days.
Last night I got them to eat by mixing some cyclopeeze and marine garlic pellets together and crushing it almost to a powder and they ate fine.
As far as nitrates....isn't 20 ppm safe enough?
I do 10% weekly changes, but if you say do a bigger change, then I will try that

hmotorsol said:

I know some gobies are very picky eaters. I would not use garlic powder unless was meant for aquarium food. use something like minced garlic or garlic extract there are a lot less additives. also try picking up some frozen mysis shrimp and see if they will eat that.

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I tried the mysis and they don't touch it. I bought some garlic pellets for them. I mean, it is only 3% garlic and other ingredients they need. They only eat it if I grind it up into powder. Then, a lot of the food just sinks causing my Nitrates to climb.

Frustrating! But they are looking healthy, so they must be eating something. I will try fasting them for a day and see if that helps. I just hope my claener shrimp doesn't get too hungry and eat up the goby's
They are tiny.

hmotorsol said:

I know i feed my my fish once a day and i constantly see the clowns picking at green hair algae.(this came from adding 45+ lbs of live rock). They might be finding another source of food too.

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I think you are right. I see my fish constantly picking at the live rock also. They wouldn't have lasted a month if they weren't eating someting.

Now to get the nitrates down. I just did about a 5 gallon change on the 29 gal tank. I have 28 lbs of rock in there so that was a pretty good water change, however, the nitrates remain 20ppm...Not too bad, but I would like to see them lower. I hear the API test kits do sometimes show a bad nitrate reading, but not sure on that. I'll hit it with another change wednesday and see, otherwise, 20ppm is what it is gonna be. What else could I do?

hmotorsol said:

Just do water changes for the moment. I would also get a better skimmer. Seaclones are not very good.

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Yup...That's what I have been doing. I will continue the changes until I get down to at least 10ppm nitrate. 5 is better.

Didn't know about seaclones? What is the difference between seaclone and a better brand? I am having to empty the cup of green foam sometimes 3 times a day, so it's doing something???

Thanks for the reply!