Yellow Stripe Anthias won't eat

[todd williams]

I wanted a small schooling fish for my reef. I bought 6 Yellow Stripe or Evan's Anthias. They are purplish pink with a yellow stripe across the top that extends from the head to the tip of tail.

They will not eat. I have tried, flake food, two types of granules, cyclopeeze, and mysis shrimp.

Two of the six have died and the remaining fish are looking thin.

Can someone please let me know what they like to eat.

Thanks

 

[SDguy]

A difficult anthias to keep, IME. Try eggs of some kind...there are various frozen varieties (the names escape me right now). Also try frozen daphnia, live baby brine shrimp...

 

[Makenna]

Rods Food makes a fish egg product that is pretty good. The cyclopeeze that you are using, is it the dry or the frozen? Most go for the frozen pretty well. Also try Nutramar Ova, prawn eggs. Live BBS shrimp certainly can help. I also used Rogers Reef Food grated up sMall so it is the right size for them.

Just some ideas that have worked for me.

 

[AfricaOffroad]

Try frozen Ocean Nutrition lobster eggs, cyclops, artemia, sometimes mysis shrimp.

Only things I can get my tuka to eat - another equally difficult anthias.

Oh, also get some pink prawn and chop it up fine.

 

[todd williams]

The cyclopese is frozen. They nibbled it the first day and then not after that. I will have to look for the egg products you mentioned. I have not seen those before at my LFS that I recall but I was not really looking for that. I tried Daphnia and they did not go for that either.

Just called the LFS and he suggested crushing up some garlic and letting it soak with the food as a scent enhancement. That did not help either.

Thanks for the suggestions. I am stumped at the moment but I better find something quick or I am going to lose these guys.

 

[Makenna]

it may also be a size issue, as it seems they were interested in the cyclopeeze. After they seemed interested in the Cyclopeeze but didn't eat it, did you continue to offer it? I have found that if they showed interest in something, I continued to offer it and after a few days they took to it. This was the case with a female P. lori I had.

Back to the size idea. Take some frozen mysis or brine since you already have it. Thaw it, and dice it up smaller, I mean real small, and try it. Continue to offer the cyclopeeze as well. Also look for Reef Nutritions 'Arcti Pods' It is readily avaialbe and again something I have had success with for Anthias.

Keep us posted.

 

[Bonvivant]

Got my Evansi to eat with brine shrimp. Then my frozen mix.

 

[todd williams]

No success so far. I bought a little brine shrimp hatchery and have that working. They have hatched but are pretty small. I will let them grow for a few days and then give that a try. I have pretty much thrown the kitchen sink at these little guys and they simply ignore everything I have tried to feed them. You can put a cloud of cyclopeze, frozen brine all around them and they do not budge. I am almost convinced that I am going to lose them if they don't feed on something soon.

I have never fed live brine before. Do you have to seperate them from the hatching water or can I just siphon them out of the bottle and use a turkey baster to feed them to the anthias? How does it work?

Also I was told I could feed the brine some DT's phytoplankton . If the hatchery container is approx 1L how much DT's would you add? A few drops??

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[todd williams]

Success

Tried some of the live brine shrimp and they took to it right away. Thanks to all that suggested brine. It worked like a charm. Now hopefully I can get them to try other foods as well. I will mix other food with the brine and feed at the same time. :dance: