Pearly jaw fish

Speedfreak95

New member
Hey guys I got a pearly jawfish and he just hides I haven't seen him eat. I've put a decent amount of mysis in there hoping he would come out or would cross his path. I've seen people use the turkey Baster technique but my problem is he doesn't even pop his head out of the hole.. Any advise??
 
How long ago did u add him?
Ime even when jaw fish eat and thrive they tend to just disappear out of no where which stinks because they r awesome
 
What other fish are in the tank? Mine was 1 of the first fish in the tank, which allowed him to settle in, before I added more. If there are larger fast moving fish, it may be scaring him.

He may also have a hole in a 2nd location, were he pops out to grab food. Mine was doing that in the beginning too. Now mine comes out with all my other fish during feeding.
 
I have a few and here is what my experience has been:
One settled right in and began eating with in a couple days. The others took longer. I did not see one for a couple weeks. They eat a lot better once they are happy with their hole. They tend to watch the other fish to look for clues. When the redspot cardinals or zebra barred dartfish are schooling nearby the jawfish are much more at ease.
Their eyesight is not great. I feed in stages so everyone knows there is food around. I feed a small bit at first, wait a couple minutes and feed a large amount. The jawfish are not great competitors for food so I have to over feed. I do not use a turkey baster to spot feed since the tank is 32" deep.
They are great fish, but watch any corals that you may have on the sand bed as they love to bury your favorite stuff with rubble from their tunnels.
 
i picked one up last week(petco) and it looked underfed. i decided to keep in fuge part of sump for a bit to get it eating good and put some weight on before going into DT. made lid for sump that was pretty tight, fish was eating great but then after 3 days it managed to somehow jump through the slots in the partition and got into the return seciton. man was i dissapointed on that one.

before i make a purchase i will sometimes think about it for months and it may take up to a year before i can decide. and this was one of those long decisions so i was pretty pumped to get it. stupid thing was that i had a brief thought to cover the intakes of the pumps in that section just in case. i wish i knew where that thought had gone to.

now reading that they do not compete all that well for food, im thinking maybe it may not be best for my tank after all. have fish that feed in every part of water column now and already dump loads of food in.
 
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