jefathome
New member
I wanted to pass on a success story regarding Frogfish...
Many who see these "ugly" little fish in person have always wanted to try them in the home tank, but have had some concerns over their picky eating habbits. Here is how I was able to convert my guy over to frozen...
Please note that this guy was about 1in long at the start of the process. Overall this process has taken at least 4 months. He is now about 1.5 - 2in long.
In order to easily get access to this guy, I am keeping him in a drilled 10x6x5in tall storage tote that is sitting on one of my frag racks in a 70g frag system. He has a shallow sand bed, a few rocks and various colors of Zoa's and shrooms so that he doesn't fade or morph. :fish1:
Step:
1) Verify that your intended purchase is at least eating LIVE food. Preferably ghost shrimp... not for the nutrition (or lack of), but becasue they resemble some of the frozen foods available to us.
2) Feed your guy live ghost shrimp for a few weeks (I fed 2 shrimp 1x week)
3) Soak the live ghost shrimp in some garlic for about 20min before feeding.
4) Take a live ghost shrimp (soaked in garlic) and run him through with some fairly heavy "test" fishing line (30 lbs in my case). Just put a little kink in the end so that he can't get off too easily. Wave it in front of your frogfish till he eats it. If he doens't, REMOVE IT and try again later. Continue a few weeks.
5) Take a live ghost shrimp and kill it. Soak in garlic. Run through with fishing line and feed to frogfish. Try this for a few weeks till he is used to it.
6) Take some large MYSIS (I prefer the PE version for this since they are fairly big) Soak in Garlic, fishing line, wave in front and hopefully he will feed.
7) PE mysis on fishing line WITHOUT garlic (unless you do garlic with all your fish anyway).
8) PE Mysis but without fishing line. You may have to use the line to bat the mysis around a bit to entice your FF. Might also be best to feed the first one on the fishing line and then the 2nd without. The first gets them into feeding mode. By the 2nd Mysis, they should strike at it much faster.
I've been feeding my 1in FF 1-2 Ghost shrimp once a week. As he got a little bigger and I went to the PE Mysis (a little smaller than Ghost shrimp), I moved this up to 2x per week.
If your fish will not eat when you move to the "next stage", wait a day or two and try again. If they STILL do not eat, move them back the the previous stage. Do NOT ever give them any more live food once they have moved into further stages. Only ever move ONE step back or you wasted all the training you did.
My FF (similar to the one below) goes nuts now every time I bust out the fishing line.
NOT my fish, but posts are worthless without pics.
Many who see these "ugly" little fish in person have always wanted to try them in the home tank, but have had some concerns over their picky eating habbits. Here is how I was able to convert my guy over to frozen...
Please note that this guy was about 1in long at the start of the process. Overall this process has taken at least 4 months. He is now about 1.5 - 2in long.
In order to easily get access to this guy, I am keeping him in a drilled 10x6x5in tall storage tote that is sitting on one of my frag racks in a 70g frag system. He has a shallow sand bed, a few rocks and various colors of Zoa's and shrooms so that he doesn't fade or morph. :fish1:
Step:
1) Verify that your intended purchase is at least eating LIVE food. Preferably ghost shrimp... not for the nutrition (or lack of), but becasue they resemble some of the frozen foods available to us.
2) Feed your guy live ghost shrimp for a few weeks (I fed 2 shrimp 1x week)
3) Soak the live ghost shrimp in some garlic for about 20min before feeding.
4) Take a live ghost shrimp (soaked in garlic) and run him through with some fairly heavy "test" fishing line (30 lbs in my case). Just put a little kink in the end so that he can't get off too easily. Wave it in front of your frogfish till he eats it. If he doens't, REMOVE IT and try again later. Continue a few weeks.
5) Take a live ghost shrimp and kill it. Soak in garlic. Run through with fishing line and feed to frogfish. Try this for a few weeks till he is used to it.
6) Take some large MYSIS (I prefer the PE version for this since they are fairly big) Soak in Garlic, fishing line, wave in front and hopefully he will feed.
7) PE mysis on fishing line WITHOUT garlic (unless you do garlic with all your fish anyway).
8) PE Mysis but without fishing line. You may have to use the line to bat the mysis around a bit to entice your FF. Might also be best to feed the first one on the fishing line and then the 2nd without. The first gets them into feeding mode. By the 2nd Mysis, they should strike at it much faster.
I've been feeding my 1in FF 1-2 Ghost shrimp once a week. As he got a little bigger and I went to the PE Mysis (a little smaller than Ghost shrimp), I moved this up to 2x per week.
If your fish will not eat when you move to the "next stage", wait a day or two and try again. If they STILL do not eat, move them back the the previous stage. Do NOT ever give them any more live food once they have moved into further stages. Only ever move ONE step back or you wasted all the training you did.
My FF (similar to the one below) goes nuts now every time I bust out the fishing line.
NOT my fish, but posts are worthless without pics.
