Changing from Frozen to Pellets

[duncantse]

So I just recently bought a red coris wrasse and it has been eating very well. Eats around 6-8 pieces of mysis shrimp everyday. I am going to go on vacation for 2 weeks at early July so I have approx. 2-3 weeks to get it to eat pellets because my family friend is going to feed it while we are away.

So the question is: how do you get new fish to eat pellets?

I have tried mixing frozen with pellets but my wrasse just ignores the pellets.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

what kind of pellets are you feeding?

 

[greech]

Get sinkable small pellets and feed them with the mysis. Using a feeding tube like e turkey baster and squirt both in at the same time. Hopefully the wrasse will grab one and like it.

My wrasse likes NLS pellets (the tiny ones).

 

[Lynnmw1208]

what kind of pellets are you feeding?

+1 new life spectrum seems to be the most palatable for a lot of fish. A lot of people use the finicky fish formula for picky fish. To get my fish to eat pellets, I just stopped feeding frozen. Just make sure the pellets aren't too big, a lot of fish won't eat the huge ones.

 

[WaterKeeper]

If you feed the fish filet mignon it is sometimes hard to switch to frozen dinners.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

+1 new life spectrum seems to be the most palatable for a lot of fish. A lot of people use the finicky fish formula for picky fish. To get my fish to eat pellets, I just stopped feeding frozen. Just make sure the pellets aren't too big, a lot of fish won't eat the huge ones.

x2

I've had plenty of fishes make the switch from mysis (and other frozen foods) to Spectrum pellets. These fishes now prefer the Spectrum pellets over frozen foods.

When making the switch use Spectrum pellets and don't feed anything else.

 

[duncantse]

Yup, currently using the 0.5mm pellets. My other fish actually prefers frozen over pellets too. So this is my plan, feed fish pellets first and if the wrasse doesn't come up, I'll feed a mix of mysis and pellets.

 

[duncantse]

Anyone know if I should stop feeding frozen and feed 1x pellets everyday? I don't want to starve my wrasse.

 

[Lynnmw1208]

If he's hungry he will eat the pellets. Wrasses usually are pigs my clowns now prefer the pellets over mysis!

 

[duncantse]

I just don't want to starve the fish because I had some bad experience with feeding pellets instead of frozen. My previous fish would not take pellets for 2 weeks and then it died.

 

[vetna]

You could try feeding it only the pellets for a few days. From my experience wrasses accept pellets fairly easily.

New fish takes pellets more easily if -
the fish is active and hungry.
other fish in the tank are already eating pellets.
As the case with wrasses -
they love swimming around; provide sinkable pellets right in front of their faces, they might grab for a bite.
if they spit the pellet out, try this longer/later.

If you are worried abut starving the fish, provide less amount of frozen food after 3 days of pellet-only meals.

 

[duncantse]

Thanks for the info. I am going to try feeding pellets only for a few days. I can see that the wrasse is eating then spiting out the pellet. Is this a good sign?

 

[Lynnmw1208]

Thanks for the info. I am going to try feeding pellets only for a few days. I can see that the wrasse is eating then spiting out the pellet. Is this a good sign?

It's a start! My anthias did this for a couple of days and then one day they just ate it.

 

[aleonn]

Try soaking the pellets in garlic. All my wrasses quickly learned to eat NLS.