bdaley
Well-Known Member
Orange Spot Filefish.
These fish are one of my all time loves in the hobby, I have kept them on and off but never in a reef setting. I pickup one in Jan from B at UA and just fed her browned out acros. I also picked up a trio of small ones about 1.5 inches, one male and two females, two months ago. I was determined that the trio was not going to eat acros and set out to do what I always do and get them to eat live black worms as I do with all my fish. Well guess what, all three are sucking them down as fast as they can, this weekend was the first time I was able to get all three to eat them.
Here is how I was able to do this.
March all three arrived eating SPS only. I placed them in a 29 QT with three browned out acro mini colonies and one dead acro. It is important to stick the dead acro stick in the mini colony so they see it and pick at it from time to time. What I do with the dead stick is thaw out frozen foods and then re-freeze it to the dead stick of acro and place it back into the mini colony, for the first month they would look at it and that was about it. As their food supply dwindled they would peck at it but not feed. I would say about three weeks ago they started to pick at it, at first just the male and the females followed a few days later. I removed the mini colonies and kept just the dead stick in there for a week till they were attacking it with gusto. Now I was able to move to the second phase of their training with no acro at all in the tank. Just broadcast feeding them frozen UVA. They took right to it on the third attempt, again the male was the first then followed be the females on the next hour feeding. (When I train fish I use a bare bottom tank and attempt the feeding each hr) this allows me to keep the tank clean. Second phase complete time for the third. Last weekend I started to food process some live black worms and feed in the same manner since then I tried the whole live black worms the fish swam to the other side of the tank and wanted nothing to do with them, I had to see how they would react to them. Since they wanted nothing to do with them I decided to blend them. It took them about 15 minutes of my dripping one drop of blended worms every few minutes before they ate the worms. I fed them like that for two days. I tried the whole worms again and same thing they wanted nothing to do with the worms. I had a bright idea of monkey see monkey do and put a fairy wrasse that loves the worms with them. BINGO they watched the wrasse eat them and the next feeding an hr later the male started to peck at the live worms then he sucked one down. The females took another full day of inspection before they started to eat the worms. So now I have three of the prettiest fish out there eating what I need them to eat to keep it simple. I have been asked a lot when I talk about my feeding on where I get my worms, I have used Eastern Aquatics for my worms since relocating to the east coast. http://shop.easternaquatics.com/.
These fish are one of my all time loves in the hobby, I have kept them on and off but never in a reef setting. I pickup one in Jan from B at UA and just fed her browned out acros. I also picked up a trio of small ones about 1.5 inches, one male and two females, two months ago. I was determined that the trio was not going to eat acros and set out to do what I always do and get them to eat live black worms as I do with all my fish. Well guess what, all three are sucking them down as fast as they can, this weekend was the first time I was able to get all three to eat them.
Here is how I was able to do this.
March all three arrived eating SPS only. I placed them in a 29 QT with three browned out acro mini colonies and one dead acro. It is important to stick the dead acro stick in the mini colony so they see it and pick at it from time to time. What I do with the dead stick is thaw out frozen foods and then re-freeze it to the dead stick of acro and place it back into the mini colony, for the first month they would look at it and that was about it. As their food supply dwindled they would peck at it but not feed. I would say about three weeks ago they started to pick at it, at first just the male and the females followed a few days later. I removed the mini colonies and kept just the dead stick in there for a week till they were attacking it with gusto. Now I was able to move to the second phase of their training with no acro at all in the tank. Just broadcast feeding them frozen UVA. They took right to it on the third attempt, again the male was the first then followed be the females on the next hour feeding. (When I train fish I use a bare bottom tank and attempt the feeding each hr) this allows me to keep the tank clean. Second phase complete time for the third. Last weekend I started to food process some live black worms and feed in the same manner since then I tried the whole live black worms the fish swam to the other side of the tank and wanted nothing to do with them, I had to see how they would react to them. Since they wanted nothing to do with them I decided to blend them. It took them about 15 minutes of my dripping one drop of blended worms every few minutes before they ate the worms. I fed them like that for two days. I tried the whole worms again and same thing they wanted nothing to do with the worms. I had a bright idea of monkey see monkey do and put a fairy wrasse that loves the worms with them. BINGO they watched the wrasse eat them and the next feeding an hr later the male started to peck at the live worms then he sucked one down. The females took another full day of inspection before they started to eat the worms. So now I have three of the prettiest fish out there eating what I need them to eat to keep it simple. I have been asked a lot when I talk about my feeding on where I get my worms, I have used Eastern Aquatics for my worms since relocating to the east coast. http://shop.easternaquatics.com/.
