Re: Why do they ignore live brine and eat flakes?

[Jim Atchison <jim@atchison.com>]

Rybi Ogon wrote:

>  The Dicrosus OTOH,
> seem to ignore the brine.  They seem to be healthy, and go for the
> flakes that I've feed them, but they let the brine swim circles around
>
> them!  Has anyone had similar experiences?

We've had very similar experiences with more than just Apistos and with
shrimp *and* flakes...seems that the fish get used to our heavy on the
blackworm/flies/pellet/Grindal worm feeding and just don't know what to
do with the shrimp or flakes. The shrimp will die and sit on the bottom,
the flakes just float the same direction, but drop a worm in the tank
and it's gone in the first few seconds.
Some of the challenge could be a training thing...they're just trained
to eat another type of food...nearly all of the foods we feed are not
"natural" in the truest senses and the taste for them is an acquired
one...sort of like broccoli.
the reverse can also be true. We have received fish that don't know what
a blackworm is having only been exposed to flakes. When we first get a
new fish e try several menu items to see what direction we need to be
working. We also keep track of this type of response so that fish coming
from the same sources can be retrained more quickly.
--
High Prairie Farms
Freshwater Aquarium Fishes
San Rafael, California
415-472-7294 (phone)     415-472-7971 (fax)
http://www.atchison.com/highprairiefarms.html
LIVE FOODS!  http://www.atchison.com/live.htm




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