Got a Yellowhead Jawfish Yesterday

Packersfan21

Packersfan21

New member
well I got a yellowhead jawfish yestersay form the lfs. I have him in the observation tank right now. He's shy and hangs out under rock. i tried feeding him pellet food today but he wouldn't take it. the lfs said they usually take mysis so i'll try some of that tommorow. So I'm open to any suggestions on what to feed him. I know for the first few days fish sometimes don't eat, but i just wanted to see what else I could try feeding him.




Thanks in advance,

Matt
 
Ok thanks. well, it looks like he dug a burrow under one of the rocks, he hasn't come out yet though. I'll try feeding him mysis after i get back from brunch.
 
My blue spot mainly eats Mysis, as well. I have some sinking pellets he will nibble at, but hardly enough to keep him nourished. Mine hid a lot in the first week or two. Now his personality has really come out. He's not as skittish. Make sure you have a lid that covers the whole tank. My first blue dot jumped out of the tank, through a small gap in the back.
 
Well, I was looking through the freezer and it looks like I have no more mysis shrimp. All I had was brine so I tried it anyway but it didn't work. I will be picking up somw mysis from the lfs today though.

robnuti- I've heard of many people that have had their jawfish jum out of their tank so I made sure that I would have a lid that covered the whole tank. Same for the display.
 
Ok, picked up some mysis today. I got freeze-dried and frozen. I tried freeze-dried today w/ no luck. I'll try some of the frozen mysis tommorow and hopefully it will come out and eat.
 
I have a pearly and when I got him he would only eat my homemade fish food (clams, shrimp, and grouper). The first day he hid in the back, then moved up to the front of the tank, and dug his cave, so that he can watch everything happening in the room. They have the best personalities. BTW he now eats everything including the Spectrum 1mm pellets.
 
I had a couple yellowheads last year. They were great fish.

They were eating well in the store before I took them home, and they were also the first fish in the tank. They took to frozen mysis pretty quick and would eat it greedily whenever I fed them.

How long was your jawfish at the lfs before you picked it up? Is he the only fish in your observation tank?

Tim
 
Ok tried frozen mysis today w/ no success. it's been five days and it hasn't eatin anything. I guess i'll have to admit that he was only at the lfs for a day before i picked it up. I had them oreder it for me and i wanted to buy it before anyone else did, and if I didn't buy him then, then I would have to wait another two days and i don't think the lfs would hold it for that long. it is the only fish and the first fish in the observation tank.
 
At this point, I would try live brine. Not much nutritional value, but enriched they aren't bad. Fish can't resist live food, especially brine. It took my firefish pair almost a week to eat. Five days for one, seven for the other. Their first meal was cyclop-eeze. To this day, one is still much braver than the other. I think I lucked out and got a male and female, as they get along.
 
You'd have to ask someone else - but I don't recall it being difficult. A lot of my lfs have used this method lately to get fish eating, and once hatched they just keep them in a tank with plenty of aeration and whatever they're enriching with.
 
Try to find live adult brine. Many LFS that have live food should have it. You may need to call around. Brine shrimp eggs are not hard to hatch, but baby brine shrimp is tiny, and probably will not entice your jawfish. IME, these fish have low survivability when they just arrive at the LFS. I hope yours makes it.
 
Darn. It would be almost impossible to find live adult brine. i have one lfs in my town and I'll they have are the eggs. I've been to most of the other lfs in nearby towns and I haven't seen live adult brine at any of them. I'm starting to get really worried I haven't seen the jawfish come out of the rocks yet.
 
What I usually do when my lfs gets a fish in that I want is go and pay for it, but ask them to hold on to it for a week if it just arrived. That way, if it dies from shipping stress, its not my fault and they have to get me a new one.

Any decent lfs should do this for you. I mean, they are getting paid for the fish upfront... all they need to do is keep it for a week and make sure it is eating.

Hopefully the little guy makes it. When I got mine, I bought a group of 3... one died after a week or two, but that was because of some sort of cut/infection on its tail which slowly killed it.

Tim
 
Darn I never thought of that. Well, I found a site that sells live brine shrimp, and it's next day delivery so I'll probably order it. I just hope he eats it.
 
Another thing to consider is food presentation. In the wild yellowheads hover near their burrows and catch zooplankton that is floating by in the currents. When I fed mine, I would use a turkey baster and slowly squirt bits of food by their burrow - often they would ignore food that was more than 6" from their burrow, as well as food that was on the sand.

You can also try soaking the mysis in some garlic extract, as it is said to be an appetite stimulant.

Finally, if you have a refugium, get a turkey baster and see if you can catch any amphipods with it by sucking them up. I do this every once in a while to supplement my fish feedings, and the fish love it. My jawfish always used to go search for any stray pods that weren't hiding when the lights came on... instant breakfast!

Tim
 
The jawfish has a burrow in the back of the observation but I will ahve to lift up the rock to get the mysis to him. I was thinking about soaking it in garlic and i'll try that today. Unfortunately, I don't have a refugium yet by I will be getting one soon. Do you think i should soak the frozen mysis in garlic or the freeze-dried mysis?
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12772456#post12772456 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Packersfan21
The jawfish has a burrow in the back of the observation but I will ahve to lift up the rock to get the mysis to him. I was thinking about soaking it in garlic and i'll try that today. Unfortunately, I don't have a refugium yet by I will be getting one soon. Do you think i should soak the frozen mysis in garlic or the freeze-dried mysis?
Click to expand...
The dry is dehydrated and will hold the garlic much better. It was just cloud off with your frozen.
 
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