hatchet fish not eating

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KarlskidMarx

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Nov 25, 2003
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Hope someone can help. I have 5 marble hatchet fish that don't seem to be eating. I added them to the tank 5 days ago and still nothing.

The funny thing is, they are behaving fine and are exhibiting no odd behaviour.

I feed my community tank bloodworms, brineshrimp, and flakes. Should I be feeding the hatchets something in particular?
 
If you can find it, I think floating foods a bit larger than flake would be good. Hikari offers Daphnia, and they float for a while before slowing sinking. You could aldo offer the frozen glass worms from SFB--most fish gobble them down quickly, and they tend to stay suspended in the water longer than blood worms.

The other possibility is that your tank has enough surface microfauna for the hatchets for now. They will happily feed on these until they are gone.
 
I am curious to hear what happened with your hatchet fish, because I am having the same problem with the "platinum" hatchet fish that I purchased last week. I am concerned that they are simply too timid to eat because there are also guppies in the tank that are quick and greedy (and a pearl gourami).

So . . . did you find a solution to your problem? If so, I'd love to hear the update!
 
My hatchet likes betta pellets and micro pellets. In fact, all of my fish love micro pellets. They're teeny tiny and they float.
 
wow. 8 years! but, still, no one has answered fully...

I've only seen the largest hatchets in a very big tank be able to catch very many blood worms before they sink... they really depend on floating foods that look somewhat like insects... Mine will take a variety of foods, but by far prefer 2 things... Wingless Fruit Flies, and Hikari micro pellets.

In the past, they have not really taken to flake as much... I think it isn't round enough. They don't really seem to go for anything they need to bite twice, unless it's alive and wriggling, in which case, they love it.
 
I was hoping that since the thread was so old, the original poster would be an expert by now and could give some advice! That didn't happen, but . . . old threads like this are still valuable sources of information for people who are online googling for solutions to the same problem!

I think hatchetfish are just super-shy and slow to acclimatize. My platinums even stayed mid-level (instead of at the surface) for about a week, and I think they were actually afraid of the tank lid! Because they weren't at the surface, I was finally able to get them to eat frozen (thawed) bloodworms by using a medicine dropper and slowly releasing bloodworms, one by one, directly over their heads! Finicky little critters! I tried betta pellets as the Zombie Hunter suggested, but those didn't work for me at all. Not sure where you all find wingless fruit flies or "glass worms." My local fish store don't have those.

Nowadays it's totally not an issue . . . the hatchetfish are thoroughly adjusted and eat regular flake food (I crumble it up pretty small), freeze-dried daphnia, or pretty much any floating food that I put into the tank. They rush around grabbing the food right along with the guppies.
 
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