Any tricks to getting a fish to eat frozen or dry food? My Banggai Cardinal refuses anything but live food!

[Mxx]

Anyone have any tricks or techniques for getting a fish to eat frozen or dry food, if it refuses anything except live???

I bought three small 1.5-2" captive bred Banggai Cardinals, put them through quarantine where none of them touched frozen food (neither before or after prophylactic medication). Added them to the display tank and one started greedily eating frozen brine and mysis, and after a month of the other two not eating one of them passed away, and I put the other in a breeder box and when I gave it live cyclops, mysis and brine shrimp, it ate all of those. I've continued giving it live food to strengthen it for a week, and have been trying to give frozen food too, including frozen mysis with garlic, in the breeder box, but it still won't touch any of it! (It did eat some frozen cyclops, although probably just because they're small enough that it can't tell they're not alive).

It's a pain to drive to pick up live food, so I do need it to acclimate to at least frozen, and dry food would be good to as I'll need to have that in an autofeeder when I'm occasionally away!

 

[griss]

@leebca @Dr. Reef

 

[five.five-six]

He’s probably eating something throughout the day that you just don’t know about. If they are hungry enough and not sick, they will eat frozen and dry.

 

[wvned]

The best way to get fish to eat dead food is to make it look like live food as much as you can. Let it float by in the flow. A little competition from a similar fish may stimulate it to grab some for itself. Adding a tiny bit of defrosted mysis in with the cloud of what the fish is eating and letting it float by.

I have never seen a positive reaction from a fish to garlic. By that I mean I never saw a fish start eating or eat more because of it. Some avoid it and some ignore it. That is my experience.

Your fish would probably respond well to live white worms that are easy to culture. I don't know if you could find those nearby. I used to grow them for my small butterfly fish.

I ordered a starter culture on eBay.
I have had fish that only started eating frozen after 2-3 months. I had 3 that never did that starved to death when I couldn't get feeder fish/live glass shrimp during covid. I wiggled so many things various ways to try to get them to eat.
I accidentally killed a live shrimp and put it in the tank anyway with the other live ones. They ignored it as it floated by.

I have had many people tell me they trained their fish to eat dead food (these were dwarf lion fish). I never got a single reply to the question of how do you train a fish.

Most fish start eating what the other fish eat eventually. Some never do.
Hope it starts eating for you.

 

[shred5]

Anyone have any tricks or techniques for getting a fish to eat frozen or dry food, if it refuses anything except live???

I bought three small 1.5-2" captive bred Banggai Cardinals, put them through quarantine where none of them touched frozen food (neither before or after prophylactic medication). Added them to the display tank and one started greedily eating frozen brine and mysis, and after a month of the other two not eating one of them passed away, and I put the other in a breeder box and when I gave it live cyclops, mysis and brine shrimp, it ate all of those. I've continued giving it live food to strengthen it for a week, and have been trying to give frozen food too, including frozen mysis with garlic, in the breeder box, but it still won't touch any of it! (It did eat some frozen cyclops, although probably just because they're small enough that it can't tell they're not alive).

It's a pain to drive to pick up live food, so I do need it to acclimate to at least frozen, and dry food would be good to as I'll need to have that in an autofeeder when I'm occasionally away!

That is a ruff one. I bred these for a while and it can be tough. You need to work to frozen first. Frozen Cylopeese and P/E calanus are the easiest first food. Then onto mysis. They love mysis and seems to be a favorite once on it.

I would drop frozen food in with live food and slowly bring the amount of live food down and raise the amount frozen food up.

Next:
Dry food I just mixed a little in with the frozen. I let dry food soak for a bit in the frozen food, Flake is easier. I did the same started raising the amount of flake and decreasing the amount of frozen.

They also learn from other fish.

Yea I remember I bought like 8 juveniles to eventually breed and they would not eat dry or frozen. They were tiny. It took work and was actually harder than some anthias to get onto dry.

 

[Mxx]

Thanks, I eventually put into a hang-on side breeder box, and gave it a lot of live brine and mysis to fatten it up, and kept trying to feed it frozen, which it continued to ignore, but today suddenly it decided to grab some of the frozen brine shrimp finally, much to my relief! But I think if I hadn't put it into the breeder box to focus-feed, then I probably would have lost it.