Success with changing Elec. Dempsey's food!!!!!

[cohazard]

About 3-4 weeks ago I bought a baby Elec. Blue Dempsey that was around 1" long. At first, he wouldn't eat any prepared foods I offerered, or frozen blood worms. So I got worried and tried live worms.

Luckily, he took to the live worms which were all he would eat for the first two and a half weeks. Because of that, he doubled in size to 2". So I decided to try to ween him off of the worms so that he could get a better diet.

I stopped feeding him the worms, and didn't feed him for 2 days. On the 3rd day, I dropped in a few shrimp pellets which he immediately attacked. Over the following week, he began swallowing more and more of the pellets. So I moved him from his 6g QT/Grow-out into my 29g planted community.

Of course, he was stressed from the move. But I was anxious to find out whether he would continue eating the pellets, or lose the progress we'd made. So I fed some shrimp pellets a couple of hours after I put him into the tank. For some reason, he didn't like the baby albino gibbiceps that's in there and he charged at it a couple of times during the feeding, but he was still eating the pellets, which made me happy. Once again though, he wasn't as fat as he used to be.

So this morning I fed them shrimp pellets again, and at the afternoon feeding, I when I was feeding the 180g some color enhancing pellets, I figured, why not try to see if the dempsey would eat them now (he wouldn't eat them when I first got him).

I poured a few in and he went for them. He was playing with them in his mouth for a while and I was just waiting to see him spit them out. But thankfully, he didn't!!! He ate almost all of them. It makes me happy because I don't like feeding the shrimp pellets every day since they're a messy food and would make me have to do extra water changes. Plus, since they're high quality color enhancing pellets, he's going to look even more gorgeous when he's grown.

Thanks for reading this long story, I'm just really happy he's finally off of the live worms and still doing great. I'll post some update pics tommorrow. I can't wait till he's big enough for the 180g!!!

 

[Slappy*McFish]

:thm:

My Dempsey can be pretty finicky, too. She is close to 4" now and still ignores pellets. She prefers flake food and freeze dried plankton and krill. I'm going to start feeding her crickets as soon as she gets a little more size on her. I'm hoping she'll learn to eat pellets soon...it takes alot of flakes to satisfy her appetite.

 

[cohazard]

Thanks Slappy :hi:

Yeah, I can only imagine how many flakes a dempsey can eat, especially at 4" lol. I wish you good luck with converting her diet.

Have you tried not feeding her for a couple of days? I think that played a huge part of my success. 2 days did the trick, 3 would probably be better. I wouldn't suggest anymore than that though.

 

[RobP]

mine have never had problems eating diffrent food but i do feed alot of live feed. i started them on feeder guppys when they were small, now that they are about 3-4 inches i feed them pellets and rosey reds, and a mixed assortment of other dry food.

 

[cohazard]

mine have never had problems eating diffrent food but i do feed alot of live feed. i started them on feeder guppys when they were small, now that they are about 3-4 inches i feed them pellets and rosey reds, and a mixed assortment of other dry food.

Yeah, I do like feeding live foods because the fish grow faster that way, but I don't have a self-bred feeder program right now. I'll start one with my platies soon though. I'll feed them to the dempsey and the clowns when they're big enough.

It kind of struck me as odd when my baby dempsey wouldn't eat the shrimp pellets right away. Do you think maybe Elec. Blues are pickier?

 

[RobP]

in my experience they have been until they reach about 4 inches then anything goes. my convicts just had babies so they will become food as soon as i see fit, i know im going to get many more!!

 

[Slappy*McFish]

Thanks Slappy :hi:

Yeah, I can only imagine how many flakes a dempsey can eat, especially at 4" lol. I wish you good luck with converting her diet.

Have you tried not feeding her for a couple of days? I think that played a huge part of my success. 2 days did the trick, 3 would probably be better. I wouldn't suggest anymore than that though.

I haven't intentionally stopped feeding her; though I have left home for a few days at a time in which the fish didn't get fed. The problem is the rest of the fish are being fasted as well...and as you can imagine as soon as I put some pellets in there, they're all over them like a hobo on a bologna sandwich. While the Dempsey just stares at the pellets, the rest of the fish are snapping them up. I'm thinking just feeding pellets exclusively for a week. If she gets hungry enough, maybe she'll try them. So far she hasn't even tasted a single pellet.