My altums angels won't eat dry food

[blim]

I have been feeding my juvenile altums frozen bloodworm and they are growing well. I thought mayb I should feed them with a variaties of food to give them a balance diet but I have a problem. They show no interest in the dry food, whether it is pellets for discus or the tetra crisp flakes. Dry food is not cheap, I can't keep trying different brands and seeing them go to waste. Any suggestion?

[Plantbrain]

Altums are about the hardest fish to keep over the long term.
Try live clean foods.

Realize that Altums are all wild caught, they come from water that is about a pH of 4.

Not much bacteria can live at that low pH, some when you place them in higher pH's, they have little resistence to bacteria, this acclimation must be done slowly and they need to be well feed during this time and with clean water/UV etc.

I've done 3 Altum plant tanks for clients.

Regards,
Tom Barr

[benny]

Do you have other dither fishes in your tank that can serve as examples for them. Sometimes, a bit of encouragement from their tankmate can help them ease into dried food more easily.

Cheers,

[blim]

The other fishes are 5 bottom feeders (algae eaters and plecos). Only one out of the six altums will occasionally takes a few bite of the dried food. Mayb I should starve them.

[benny]

Perhaps some juvenile eartheaters to stir their interest? Not expensive additions to the tank and can be easily put up for adoption if you should decided to change the fauna in your setup at a later stage.

Cheers,

[blim]

What are eartheaters?

[Justikanz]

I think the Mikrogeophagus spp., otherwise known as the rams, might do better...

Eartheaters are medium sized cichlids, known as the Geophagines. You can read up on them here: http://www.sydneycichlid.com/old_scp/geophagus.html. They stay near to the substrate and sift the substrate for food. Thus, the common name, eartheaters...

[blim]

Thanks for the advice. If I understand the suggestions correctly, when the Rams or the eartheaters go to the surface for the dry foods, they may encourage the altums to follow? I have seen the Rams, they will add colour and make my tank more interesting.

[Ibn]

Really hard to get them to take any sort of dry food. I've been trying it for the past 3 months with some New Life Spectrum pellets on an Eheim timer in between the bloodworms. Only one of them has taken to it while the rest of them just stare at it.

You might have better luck with yours since they're younger. Mine are over 1.5 years old and have either been fed frozen bloodworms supplemented with live tubifex worms when I'm out of the bloodworms.

[stormhawk]

blim, don't starve them please. Get small fishes like tetras or danios, that feed from the surface, guppies will work too since they're greedy little buggers. The altums must "observe and learn" from the other fish that the dried foods are meant for them. Otherwise you'll have to feed them only live foods.

Since most of them are wild caught, you might have a hard time acclimatising them to feeding on dried food. Its hard, but if you manage to do this, they'll thrive in your tanks.

Rams do not actually feed directly from the surface, since they prefer to remain in the middle or the bottom areas of the water column. To have an effect with using rams instead of surface dwelling fish, you'll have to use sinking flakes or pellets. The rams will feed greedily on dried foods, if they're tank bred specimens, and with luck, your Altums will follow.

[Plantbrain]

Most are not wild caught, all of them are.

Regards,
Tom Barr

[blim]

Thanks all for the advice.

I am trying this routine - feed them with frozen bloodworms in the morning and evening in small quantity. Dry food during the day. One altum is taking the dry food, see whether it can lead the rest to do so.

Tom, what do you mean by 'most are not wild caught, all of them are'?

[Plantbrain]

They are all wild caught, no one has bred them, there have been unsubstantiated claims, I highly doubt them to be true in any sense of the word.

As much as I'd like to wish to believe it...........I've seen some small fish sent in from the one main location they are found, there were two locations, now one of them is off limits.

I think some people have lied and sold the small fish as "super tank raised F1 fry" and sold them off at a much higher price, but they were not tank bred.
One person made a claim in Germany to have bred them, I think he's lying.

Angel breeders are nuts, and I know too many to know they have not been bred in a tank yet. Maybe never, but hopefully one day.

They've tried horomones, all sorts of water qualities, foods etc.
They have had lots of stock etc to try from also.

They are just a weird skittish hard to keep without dying fish that lives at a pH of 3.7-3.9.

Very slow acclimation and quarantine procedures are done just to get them to the hobbyists, they have a lot of them in the one location, but few make it to a long life in an aquarium and you need to be dedicated to feeding them live foods.

CA Black worms work pretty good and are fairly pathogen free.
We soak them in milk, this purges any contents in the gut and likely adds some protein, kills some bacteria. I lijke plain old earthworms, red worms, I place them in filter floss and add water, they squirm up through the floss and expel the dirt, then I fed them or soak them prior in protein powder and Vitamin.

Seems to work well.

Glass worms are nice, but they are generally loaded with parasites and bacteria. There are also brine, they have low nutrition, but adding vitamins and protein powder to the water a couple of hours before hand will help that.


Regards,
Tom Barr

[StanChung]

That's really interesting Tom about the source. One Japanese guy claims to have selectively bred them to produce red eyes! http://www.kaff.jp/index.html
They look a little off because of the red eyes and half black body but I've seen some of my fish look like that.

My friend Jakarta has trained Altums to eat Flake! Another guy who has like 30 adult Altums trained them to eat pellets.

However mine stare at these foods like it was transparent.

[Ibn]

As far as I know, there has been no confirmed reports of altums ever spawning. As for the red eyes, I think it's a natural occurrence. When my altums were younger, they didn't have any red eyes, but starting at around one year of age, the red eyes came in.

All my altums are wild caught.

[StanChung]

May be buying some tank bred ones next month for something silly.
Will have to see if they're the real McCoy.

[blim]

My friend Jakarta has trained Altums to eat Flake! Another guy who has like 30 adult Altums trained them to eat pellets.

However mine stare at these foods like it was transparent.

Please tell us how your friends trained their altums to take dry foods. It will be a great help to altum lovers.

[StanChung]

Please tell us how your friends trained their altums to take dry foods. It will be a great help to altum lovers.

I think his method was flakes and nothing else. Once per day.

His altums loved flakes! I could not believe it myself.
He says they feed dry food to reduce their predation instinct towards tankmates. Doubt that could happen.

My theory is feed them worms till they get their strength after you receive them and then only dry food for a week. I have one fella that pecks on crushed algae wafer but the other looks on. Both ignore fish tabs.

[lorba]

I have about 16 altums in a client's tank, which feeds readily on tetra bits and frozen bloodworms for the past 1.8yrs. They are now coming to near 1ft including finnage.

As long as there are some 'leaders' which eat the food, the altums will eat too, slowly, out of starvation.

You can try using live BW, then frozen BW, then alternate it with red color food like tetra bits.

[blim]

This is an update.

It is more than a month and after many attempts and trying different dry foods, finally my altums are accepting dry food. 4 will eat from the surface and 2 will only eat the pellets which sink to the bottom.

This is what I have gone through:
I cut down the amount of frozen BW, fed them once in the morning and once in the evening, and dry food in between. It did not work. Except for one, the rest ignored the dry food.

Then I tried a different approach. I mixed frozen BW with the pellets thinking that they might eat the pellets which absorbed the taste of BW. It didn't work except for one.

Then I starved them for 3 days, this time another one started taking dry food but the other 4 still refused. Seeing that most of them stop growing except for the 2 which ate the dry food, I fed them frozen BW again.

Finally, I stop BW completely and fed only small amount of dry food. After 5 days of starving, they are eating now.

This experiment resulted in 2 altums growing much bigger because they accepted dry food earlier and they ate more, and the other 4 which ate less almost stop growing. Well, at least they have accepted the dry food.

What I learn from this experiment is that you have to make them forget about the taste of frozen BW through starvation.

I tried different dry food. Started with a Taiwanese product, then Tetra Pro and Tetrabits, finally I switched to JBL NovoBits. They seem to like JBL NovoBits more, mayb it was after the 5 days starving.