Argh...she doesn't seem to want to eat frozen anymore....

[bluekoi]

Hi all!
Our LFS started selling live brine so I decided to treat my girl to some live food.
(We've been giving the brine lots of phyto.) Now though, I can feed mysis and she hardly looks at them. She keeps wandering the tank looking for the brine.
Does anyone have any experience with this type scenario? Do you think she will go back to frozen or do I need to start breeding mysis in my basement? :worried:
help.....
thx!

 

[JLynn]

Is she captive bred? I have heard of wild caught/tank raised SH reverting back to live food after being given some as a treat, but I have never heard of it with CB... Either way, it looks like you will have to retrain her to eat frozen food. A good way to do that is simply to dangle it in front of her with a turkey baster; make it "dance" or move around some so it looks like it is live. You can even make her chase it around a bit. Just gradually decrease the amount of movement to get her used to the idea of eating inert prey. Another thing that might work is to put cyclopeeze in the tank right in front of the power head while she is watching. When she sees it blow around in the current, she might be tricked into thinking it is live, and eat it even when it eventually falls to the sand. If one time with live food was enough for her to revert back on her training, then it will probably take a lot of work to get her back in the habit. Just be very patient with her. In the meantime, you should probably order some live mysis so that on the days when she cannot be coaxed/tricked into eating frozen mysis she does not go hungry. Good luck!

 

[bluekoi]

To be honest, I really don't know her origin. The guy at the fish store I got her from (yes I have learned my lesson) said she was a kuda and gave me the impression that she was one of his, and that he was just getting out of seahorses. In truth, she is barbouri. I have no idea where he got her from. She was doing well with the frozen until now. She seems to enjoy hunting them.
Thank you for the ideas. I will definitely put them to use and keep everyone posted!!

 

[timinnl]

Barbouri are hard to come by in the states, so are you sure? If it is a kuda and you are not 100% if it is CB or TR, chances are higher that it is a TR one.

Here is something that might help you out.

If possible, get some live mysis and gutload them with flake food, pellets, cyclopeeze and/or feed the mysis enriched artemia with something like Dan's feed with Beta-glucan.

1: Put the live mysis in a turkey baster (with tank water or clean saltwater.) and add one or two mysis at a time in an area with some flow.

2: Try to feed from the same location and just keep feeding them the live ones for about a week or so.

3: After a week, they should be used too seeing the mysis coming out of the turkey baster and follow the turkey baster around.

4: Then while giving them their morning feed, add a few live one in the tank and slowly add some frozen mysis that you rinsed well into the tank at the high flow area. With luck you can trick them into taking the frozen mysis.

It will take some time before they switch over and you just need to keep at it until they do.

Once the take to eating all frozen mysis, you can train them to eat from a dish.


Kind Regards,

Tim

 

[bluekoi]

Thx! I will certainly try that. I was planning to order the live mysis anyway. The Seahorsesource website says they ship those out on Tuesdays, so I hadn't placed the order yet.
I actually took a picture of her and sent it to SeahorseSource for identification as I was wanting to order her some tankmates. Dan identified her as a barbouri. I can post the pics, once I read the "how to post pics" info.
I used to feed in a big seashell. They didn't always eat from that. Most of the time, she would sit there and look at the shell, almost as if she didn't see them. I got a little concerned that she wasn't eating enough, so I bought a number of shallow darker colored bowls so that the mysis would stand out, but that didn't go over very well. So, I ended up just feeding with the turkey baster directly into the water.
Gonna place my order for some live mysis. Glad the weekend is here. I can spend a lot more time observing her.
I will let you know how it goes!