It is no surprise, many species of Wild Caught (WC) fish do not naturally accept dry food. Some species which i have worked with that are notoriously hard to wean off live food are Mandarin Dragonets and any species of WC Seahorses. This poses some unique challenges to the aquarist should he / she decide to continue to try to keep WC fish. One option is to provide a fresh supply of live food for as long as the critter lives. Many of us who have tried to do this know that this can be a space, time and money consuming endeavor. Now you not only have to take care of your critters, you have to care for their food as well! Besides, as I have explained before in B. Macrostoma (Live Food), all live food carries the risk of diseases.
IMO, it is in the best interest of both aquarist and the fish that WC critters be weaned off live food an onto frozen or dried food, which is easily available at most big box pet stores, easy to store in the freezer or on the shelf and carries a significantly less risk for infections disease.
Here are some pointers to help with the weaning process.
For most freshwater fish, is best to start with a Bare Bottom (BB) tank during Quarantine (QT- It is good practices that new fish should be QT’d) so that you can kill 2 birds with one stone, namely QT and weaning at the same time. Keep furnishings (or if you must, substrate) to a minimum so that uneaten foods are easily siphoned without having to constantly tear the tank apart which stresses the fish.
For SW fish, you might need to have at least some cured live rock and / or macroalgae to maintain water quality. Some fish such as burrowing gobies, jawfish etc. might need a layer of substrate to be comfortable. It is best to hook up a temporary hang on back refugium and put live rock and macroalgae (I recommend Chaetomorpha) in the fuge in order to keep the main tank as clear as possible, with the exception of one or two live rock for "comfort".
Either by research or by asking the people who sold you the fish, you should already know what kinds of live foods the critters are already eating. Have these foods on hand when the fish arrive and 24hrs after first acclimation, they should be fed these familiar foods.
As soon as your new fish is comfortable in the QT tank and eating live foods well, you should think about weaning. This is so that by the time your fish are out of QT and join the community tank / planted tank or centralized circulation, they will be taking dry / frozen foods well.
Start introducing dried /frozen foods at their first feeding of the day (usually in the morning). By this time they would have starving all night and would be ready to eat in the morning. Introduce the dried / frozen foods together (or more accurately just before) the live foods. Hopefully they will be adventurous enough to try a piece of the new stuff.
If feeding hard pellets, soak in water before feeding. Soaking softens the pellet a little bit and makes the pellet feel more like palatable food instead of a hard rock.
Let the uneaten food remain in the tank for 30 min to an hour or so, hopefully your fish will be hungry enough to just try everything in the tank and hopefully find that the dry food is palatable. Remove the uneaten food after that. You don’t want the food fouling the water.
It helps to feed at the same time, with the same tools and at the same location. This way the fish will associate a particular time, tool (like a turkey baster) or location (the right hand corner of the tank) with "Dinner is Here!". I know a seahorse breeder who taps the tank a couple of times before feeding at the same location every time. As soon as he taps, the ponies come out from their hiding spots and gather at the pre set feeding station.... very cool indeed.
For most mid - upper level freshwater fish, i like to use a worm cone to do the weaning. (see below)
Patience! Most FW fish may be successfully weaned to dry foods. Just don't give up.
Sadly however, some SW fish may never learn to eat anything that isn't alive. But this is no reason not to try anyway. If you don't want to take the risk of failure, then i would highly suggest purchasing Captive Bred (CB) fish instead of WC ones. One of the saddest stories in SW aquaria is the harvesting & sale of mandarin dragonets. Just do a quick google search and you'll see that many are lost to starvation in aquaria because they never learn to eat anything but live copepods.
WEANING FW FISH USING A WORM CONE (Now With Video!!)
I think that using a Worm Cone might be one of the best tools to wean FW fish. Benefits are multifold
It is (somewhat) see through - Fish can see the contents of the feeder and / or see the wiggling motion of any live food within the cone and be tempted to strike the cone. This is very useful when training fish to strike at, or eat out of the cone.
The holes in the larger cones allow common dry, live and frozen to pass through when the fish strike at time. I have used the cup to feed live foods such as Daphnia, Adult Brine Shrimp, California Blackworms; Dry foods such as flake and pellet; and Frozen foods such as bloodworms, small mysis, frozen daphnia, brine shrimp etc.
It contains the food well, preventing most uneaten food (flake or other) from being dispersed all over the tank and having to be cleaned up after. This is a major plus point if you have to do the weaning in a planted / community tank (as in the video below). You just have to pick up the cone and empty the uneaten food into the trash... simple!
It is readily available online or at most good LFS.
The first step is getting the fish familiar with the worm cone and eventually associating it with feeding time.
Start by feeding the fish their regular familiar foods with the cone floating in the tank.
Gradually move the feeding location closer and closer to the cone, eventually ending up right next to the cone. I find that the best way to accomplish this is to feed them very small amounts each time, which (if you have a group of fish) forces them to be more aggressive and attack the food before other fish get to it. For example when i feed live blackworms, I drop in one or two worms at a time and wait for them to gobble them up before adding one or two more. All the time, slowly leading them closer and closer to the cone... like leaving little crumbs leading up to the cone.
When the are comfortable feeding right next to the cone, the next step is obvious. Drop a coupla live foods into the cone. Hopefully they will see the movement in the cone and try to suck them out of the cone. Through experience, I have found that if you can get one fish to constantly peck at the cone, the other guys will copy that one and all go for the cone.
In order to save some typing, I've decided to continue my description with a video instead. Check it out:
On the urging of my friends, I started this website by putting together the original (and quite successful) B. Macrostoma pages. Since then it has grown to include much more aquarium related information. All this time I've provided all this info and lots of free e-mail support to anyone who needed help. The advertising on this page helps out a little to offset the cost of webhosting. So if you see something that you may be interested in listed within the GoogleAds banners, then please don't hesitate to check it out.
I thank you all for your great interest in my articles and I hope to keep hearing from you guys, even if it is just dropping me a note to say hi. God Bless!
