How to get waspfish to eat frozen mysis?

[cherry_perry]

I have a couple of red bandtail waspfish arriving soon. I will be quarentining them for a short period (around a week) in a small tank. I want to move them quickly to the main tank so that they can have access to pods.

These fish were capured recently, I think they just stayed for 3 or 4 days at the distributor and they arrived today at the fish store. I am sure they are neither used to captivity nor to dead food.

I live in a remote area and I will not have access to live food.

I ordered 1 bag of live adult brineshrimp. Around my house I can find mosquito larvae.

Any tips on how to get these guys eating?

[buffed.ba]

You can culture pods in a jar on the window sill. Or in a bucket outside if you need to. Fill them with water from your main tank after a water change.
To get them on to frozen feed the live food adding small amounts of frozen so they get used to it. Watch them at feeding times and keep doing it until they will eat it.

[almondyjaime]

So they hunt pods? I have a refugium and there’s a good pod population in the tank.

[jaime.cunningham]

If you cannot get any other live foods easily pods are the easiest to culture. Most fish will pick at pods if you drop them into a tank.

[slam_cunningham]

Thanks. I think they will be fine, there are pods of all sizes in the tank.

[rainyjanie]

I got mine eating quit easily without live food. Frozen mysis and krill was the food of choice (they’ll eat brine shrimp no problem but probably not the best food to use if you want to fatten them up).

The trick is training them to be more aggressive feeders. I kept mine in a section of my sump for a month and put large quantities (to them anyway) of frozen food in front of them as often as I could. For the first few weeks they just hid under the reactor pump and ate small amounts when I wasn’t there. However for the next 2 weeks they’d come and sit at the front of the glass waiting to be fed as soon as I opened the cupboard doors.

In my reef I still have trouble getting food down to them so I turn all the pumps off at feeding time and use a large turkey baster to get it to the sand. They recognise this now and bite the ends of it when it gets close to the tank bottom.

I’ve had mine for a few years now so feel free to ask if you have any more questions on them 🙂

I know you don’t have access to live food but they absolutely love live river shrimp too….

[thompsonthethomson]

Hopefully they will take to frozen right away for you, then you wont have to bother with the live food.

[mean.pauline]

Thanks. I am going to pick them up next monday.

[ryzx1fn0q2rc]

I dont have any experience of this exact species but have dealt with lots of other predators including other waspfish. I tended to use river shrimp to begin with and transition them to dead food over a week or so but have fed dead food straight away. For me the key is mimicking nature so I use a food that’s the whole animal, like krill, and flow. Fish aren’t going to react to food that doesn’t look normal and the head of the prey is definitely key. I would feed krill or good mysis and drop it in front of them to see if they react and if they don’t then use a turkey baster or pipette to blow the food in a more natural way. Normally it doesn’t take long to get them feeding but if they show no interest then leave it a day or two as they are predators so are used to fasting before a big meal.

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