Butis butis feeding question.

cherrypie

cherrypie

Home Of The Punk Rock Fish
Jul 19, 2005
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Perth, Australia
Just wondering if anyone has experiences with keeping a Butis butis (crazy fish / crimson tipped gudgeon), mainly I'm just curious about what seems a good feeding regime for them. My one is about 5cm (~2inches) long, I have added school of gambusia (mosquitofish) to the tank which he's slowly working on but they're a bit fast for him, so I give him a glass shrimp every day or two. It seems to be adequate for now and he seems healthy but I would like some other peoples input on how frequently these fish need to eat.
 
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I had one and i fed him feeder goldfish. If you feed him like that he will just eat when he wants. He can also get them at night. I would leave fish with mine until he had eatin them all. Hope this helps.

Emery
 
Yup, basically what I'm doing, he always seems hungry or he really really likes glass shrimp. There's always fish in the tank for him, but if a glass shrimp goes in the tank it's ussually eaten within a few minutes of him seeing it.
 
I had one for about a year. It grew rapidly and by 5-6", t'was a remorseless eatin' machine. At the time I was keeping some of the smaller brackish fish, and had juvie chromides and celebese rainbows. Expensive feeders. It went back to the shop

Very cool though, if your interested in a subtly pretty torpedo shaped fish in shades of brown, that hang/hug the underside of horizontally placed driftwood near the surface, and pounce randomly and effectively at passing feeders.

Would be a great oodball in a large tank with the usual larger brackish fish like monos/scats/dats/etroplus canarensis (for sale at MFK right now) or pretty much anything it can't eat. (aside - this would be an awesome tank, but even my 180gal would have a tough time with more than a few of these fish).

mmmmm. . . cherrypie. . .
 
He's buddied up with 3 juvenile red scats at the moment, strangley they're very friendly towards him, though he gets nippy towards them sometimes, because they always get in the way when he's hunting. Funny that you mention rainbows, I have been offered a decent number of black-banded rainbows (M. nigrans) for feeders when I want them, but they're too big for him at the moment.

Out of curiousity has anyone ever been able to get a Butis butis to eat dead food? (ie. frozen fish, shrimp, squid etc?)
 
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cherrypie said:
Funny that you mention rainbows, I have been offered a decent number of black-banded rainbows (M. nigrans) for feeders when I want them, but they're too big for him at the moment.
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Ack! Sacrilege! Bows as feeders? Ayeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Roan
 
Rainbows seem to be the prefered food of most of the Aus piscivores, guess they taste good and aren't too hard to get cheaply around these parts if you know the right people, though I'm sure the angfa people would have a fit.

As for my Butis... at the moment, if it doesn't move, he's not interested. I will see if I can train him onto dead food. He's quite tame and not afraid when I have my hand in the tank rearranging things, so hopefully it wont be too hard.
 
There's like 40 Gambusia in there at the moment, so don't worry, the bows are safe.. for now :)
 
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