New lion

[Sonicblast12]

Passed on several fish waiting for a blood red volitan, and I finally found him today. Ran out of patience and almost bought a massive black volitan on Sunday...glad I waited.

He was a little grumpy about the flow at first, but after making some adjustments he's swimming laps around the tank.

Probably around 8 inches right now.

 

[SkullV]

Beautiful! I wish I had the room for one of these guys!

 

[DoubleM 10]

thats awsome what size tank you have him in?

 

[Sonicblast12]

55 qt.

 

[GrendelPrime76]

beautiful lion

 

[namxas]

SA-WEET specimen! Is it weaned?

 

[Sonicblast12]

Not yet. I'm thinking it will be a couple of days before food is on it's mind.

Plucked him out of a Petco tank the morning they got it in. So it got acclimated twice in a very short period of time. But it was at Petco long enough to get a dose of ich. In hypo qt right now, but was a lot more active yesterday. All pumps back on, surfing the current.

Dropped in a chunk of shrimp last night and it followed it all the way to the substrate, thought it over for a minute, and decided it wasn't time yet.

 

[sacremon]

Funny how food training can go. I've been feeding my lions with a feeding stick. If I have food on the stick, the volitans will be right at the water surface and snap the food from the stick immediately. If the same food falls into the water, not on the stick, he will look at it with interest, but will likely not eat it.

 

[Sonicblast12]

Double post

 

[Sonicblast12]

I'm thinking some fishing line theatrics should work.

 

[seahorsedreams]

Awesome!

 

[Sonicblast12]

Fishing line trick didn't work so far tonight. Looks interested but hasn't taken the plunge. I'll try again after lights out.

Here are a couple with the flash on

 

[namxas]

Gorgeous lion, the coloration is striking.

We use a modified "stealth" feeding stick for all of our Scorpaenformes, large and small, and it works super well.

It's described in Tools of the Trade: Equipment & Techniques to Convert your Fish onto Frozen

 

[Sonicblast12]

That's a great link, I was looking that over in another thread.

It's been about 4 days and it hasn't shown much interest in food. Admittedly I haven't been trying that hard. I'm staying patient...should be getting mighty hungry soon.

I do have a question since this is my first lion. What is the point where it's advisable to stop offering exclusively frozen and offer live food to maintain health? A week? Two?

Is that a setback in the weaning process?

 

[Mental1]

What many people do is start off with live in a net so the lion gets used to food being in the net. When the lion has been doing well with that for a few weeks you can then try frozen in the net. When I got my fu's I did not even try giving them frozen for 3 months. Then the first time I gave them frozen in the net they took it. Now with one the fus I can just drop frozen in and she eats it -- the other will do so occasionally but usually have to use the stick with him. My fuzzy is a pig and will eat whatever I drop in the tank.

 

[Sonicblast12]

It wasn't in Petco long enough to have eaten anything, hasn't eaten for me, and didn't eat during shipping so I figured it was been at least a week since it's eaten. So I caved and went and bought some minnows today.

Used your advice and put a live minnow into a net dipped it into the lion tank. The lion looked at the net, saw the minnow swim out and it was like an electric shock went through the tank. Minnow vaporized. Fed two more in the same manner.

Went back about 20 minutes later and held up the net in front of the tank, lion followed the net everywhere. Held up a larger and different colored net...nothing.

Smart fish.

 

[Mental1]

So what you can do is continue with the net and live food for a while and then try frozen. He will get it -- those guys are supposed to be one of the easier scorps to transition over. They just don't recognize dead stuff as food so you have to show them.

 

[Sonicblast12]

Not yet weaned, but responding a lot more to my presence.

Now we get a look at the "stop wiggling dead things in front of me and give me another feeder" dance.

 

[Sonicblast12]

Blasting frozen silversides out of the water column for the past couple of days. Looks like it's weaned. (From the minnows at least. Now I don't know what to do with the rest of the rosy reds.)

I'm just unsure of how much to feed...don't want to overdo it. Only takes a couple of silversides to produce a slight bulge in the belly, so I suppose I'll do that about 3x a week. Seems to be what most recommend.

Thanks for the suggestions, worked quicker than I could have hoped.

 

[namxas]

Very cool...volitans do tend to be an easy "wean". It's always nice when the fish gets with the program.

As for the rosy reds, once your fish is a solid feeder, you can toss a rosy in once a month till they're gone, that won't harm the fish, esp if you gut load them with a good-quality marine flake food.