Need to go on vacation.. fish won't eat freeze-dried

[xboxdisc]

I'm planning to leave for at least a week on vacation during the holidays. I have a porcupine puffer, snowflake eel, and a fuzzy dwarf lionfish that need to be fed. I was planning to use an automatic feeder using freeze-dried krill as the food source. However, some problems exist:

Snowflake eel doesn't seem to actively forage the top of the waters, where the freeze-dried food usually floats. Not sure if pellets will reach the eel if I use pellets instead.

Fuzzy dwarf lion and the porcupine puffer fish both refuse freeze-dried krill outright. They just look at it and swim away. On rare occasions, the porcupine will nip at the freeze-dried, but will leave most of it uneaten. They prefer the frozen krill that I've been feeding them, but this is impossible if I am away on vacation.

I tried convincing them to eat the frozen with the freeze-dried stuff, but they still seem to ignore the freeze-dried. I also tried only giving them freeze-dried krill in the morning, and then frozen at night. But they would ignore the freeze-dried as usual.

Is there any way to convince them to eat the freeze-dried?

 

[MCCOOL]

Sounds like you're doing all you can.

I wouldn't worry about them having to go a week without food, assuming they are fat and healthy now, going a week wont hurt them.

 

[Korrine]

I agree with the above. If they are fat and healthy currently, going a week without food won't hurt. If you want, give them a good feed before you leave and do a water change.

 

[romanr]

You can try dropping the food from the feeder into a feeding ring. This will allow the FD Krill to hydrate and then be more readily available in the middle/bottom of the water column. You can also try juicying up the FD krill with some frozen krill "juice" and this will make the FD smell like what they are used to eating. Of course you'll "juice" up the FD krill and then let them dry out again before putting it in the feeder.

 

[treylane]

Get a pet-sitter or friend to come in and feed frozen while you're gone.

 

[Monkeyfish]

The fish you listed should have no difficulty going a week without food.

 

[LukFox]

The eel and lion won't care (your concern for them actually has me worried you're overfeeding them), and you could have someone come over once or twice for the puffer if you can't get it eating freeze dried.

Somewhat unrelated, but it sounds like krill is making up a good part of their diet so I'll go ahead and say it. Krill is thought to cause lockjaw in lions and puffers, so I would really suggest switching to something else entirely when you return from vacation and have the time. You could replace it with prawns, clams, mussels, etc from your grocery store.

 

[IFbettas]

A week without food is nothing for most fish, as long as they are healthy. My banggai cardinal goes without food for 3 weeks when he's carrying a mouthful of eggs. At the end of that time he isn't too much skinnier than before.

 

[xboxdisc]

Thanks for the advice. I wasn't aware that krill could cause lockjaw. I had assumed that the shell on the krill would be sufficient enough to prevent it... I'm going to switch over to other stuff probably later this week. Although, I do have other questions regarding clams and lockjaw. Is there a particular species I should buy? If I buy fresh clams, I would sit them in water first and have the clams eject the waste, but then how long should I leave this clam in my tank? Looking at this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiKDzx2zijk it seems like the puffer is ignoring gnawing the shell of the clam and is instead trying to pry it open with its mouth. The same question goes for the table shrimp. Will the puffer really go after the shell on the shrimp, or will it somehow circumvent it?

It seems a crab leg or a snail shell would be the best candidates? Both require cracking of an outer shell before being able to get the meat.

By the way, Romanr, your lion looks really stunning. Got any more pictures? Heh heh.

 

[AuroraDrvr]

FWIW, lock jaw is not the same as over-grown teeth. I'm sure Greg, Frank or someone else can explain it better, but from what I remember it's a nutritional deficiency that causes paralysis of the jaw.