Mr. Saltwater Tank TV Friday AM Quick Tip #114: New Fish? Here’s What To Feed It At First
Getting new fish for your saltwater tank is always exciting. I know corals are great, but fish are what very likely got you into saltwater tanks.
However sometimes the fish aren’t as excited about your food as you are about them. Here’s how I get my new arrivals eating quickly.
Browse the Store! Questions?
Great tip, will give the brine shrimp a try. Do you also quarantine corals?
Does anyone have experience with the automatic brine shrimp hatchery’s?
Ive post pics of my twin girls on ur facebook befor…they love tank…thanks for all the advise in ur videos…and making us a happy tank owner…keep doing wat u do …..and and keep safe …
Since you are adding the brine to a QT tank are there any concerns about putting in too many Brine Shrimp at once since you have minimal filtration running and no live rock?
Jason Reynolds, as with any food source going into a QT, the key is to get out the dead ones just like you would get out the uneaten food. Once the brine shrimp die, they decompose (just like uneaten food) and must be either netted or sucked up with a baster and discarded. Once they start to decompose, that is when you could get a spike in ammonia which we all know is toxic to our fish. So put in the brine shrimp is small amounts and let your QT fish eat them up before adding more. Minimal amounts of uneaten ones just waiting to die and give that nasty ammonia spike.
Hopefully that makes sense. Good luck!
Jason Reynolds…Nick B nailed most of it and I always feed lightly in a QT tank.
Thanks Abraham!
Mark…I don’t personally QT corals. There is a risk that a fish disease might come in on the coral and that risk is low. It’s so low that I’m willing to risk it.
Usually filtration basket and Skimmer will take it away. What i do is turn off powerheads AND return pumps. Turn off light or else most brine will go to top of water. Let them eat the live brine for 30 minutes and then turn on everything back. Skimmer will always stay on.
Hey Mark,
Again, another great tip but here’s the challenge I faced after feeding my quarantined Anthias. After feeding them live brine shrimp for a week or two to make sure they are eating and building some body fat I could not get them to eat anything but live brine shrimp. Even when I tried to trick them by mixing the live brine with pellet or even frozen brine they would only eat the live brine. After just saying “guys no more live brine shrimp its frozen or pellets from here on out” they would starve themselves to death. Now this didn’t happen with all of them but I’ve found that if a wild caught fish that won’t eat anything but live, they will soon no longer be alive. I haven’t found anyone with a solution to this problem. Oh, and yes I tried soaking it it garlic:-)
“YOU CAN PUT A FISH IN WATER BUT YOU CAN’T MAKE HIM EAT”
Great tip! Even my Potter’s Angel (a typically finicky eater) goes after LB. If I could make one addendum, it would be to remind people that we can’t use LB for a long term food…it has little nutritional value. I use it to get new fish to eat and as occasional treats in the display tank, but our jobs for QT feeding should be to make sure we wean the fish onto a good frozen blend and/or a quality pellet food.
DAVE, A good interim food that I have found helpful for very difficult feeders is frozen cyclopeeze. Some Anthias are notorious for low feeding response, and it often depends on where the fish was collected. I have a Bartlett’s and a Dispar in my display, and you’re right…they took a while to get them switched to frozen. Anthias are zooplankton feeders and usually don’t target larger foods. Arctic copepods such as the cyclopeeze brand do seem to help a lot to get a feeding response on frozen foods, and they’re fairly high in protein and HUFAs as well. Another food I’ve had good success with is a slush-frozen product from ATM called “Frozen2.0 Zooplankton”. This isn’t a plug (I don’t even care for the TV Show) but this food seems to instigate a strong feeding response for many fish.
Any tips of getting them off the not so nutritionally balanced brine once they are accustomed to the tank, especially the picky eaters(Mandarin, Leopard Wrasses etc..)
?
Thanks Mark and Nick!!! 🙂
Shawn O…there was a great article in Coral Magazine in Dec of 2011 about dragonettes and how to get them to eat frozen.
I’ve found that QT is a great place to train fish to eat your foods. The fish doesn’t have competition for food and you can easily turn off the flow and let the food float around or settle for the bottom feeders like mandarins
Richard R…great point. I forgot about that food. Another good food that is a little bigger than cyclopeeze is Nutramar Ova. It has high nutritional content and my anthias (and all my fish) go after it very quickly.
Do you have to rinse the brine shrimp before netting them and putting them in for feeding? How long can you keep them? I usually use the frozen foods.
I dont rinse the brine, I just pour a little (water and all) into the tank. You can keep them in their own tank with an air bubbler for a couple of days. Some people say weeks if you feed them but I’ve never had luck with that
Mark,
i’ve grown artemia in the summer quite easely. Get a big wide container to put them in. The more open the better (height does not matter). Put them in a not to hot place in the garden. Put in some eggs. And let it go.
Refill the container with water if needed (tap water is fine), or just let it rain. Also don’t worry about some leaves. This way i get almost free live food for my fish during the non freezing months/little bit warmer months. So from april till november. If i’m lucky whole winter.
kevin…really?! That’s crazy! Where do you live (so I can get an idea of ambient air temps)?
Thanks for another great tip, I will try the brine shrimp.
The netherlands. in general a normal summer is 20-22 degrees (celcius), some rain. The tricky part is the one or two weeks 30 degrees.
Also you don’t have to replanish with new eggs when they hatch they will reproduce themselves, so you get big and small live food.
Kevin…I’m definitely intrigued. I’ll have to try this once the weather warms up here
Great tip Mark.
Hey Mark,
Great tip and videos big fan and long time subscriber. So what your take on ghost shrimp? yes, I know they are freshwater, but to get picky eaters to eat it could do the trick right? Live brine is hard to come by I feel like and I have heard many negatives for instance it giving fish parasites and other nasty things. Myth or fact? either way I have heard of ghost shrimp working. Havent had a picky eater in a while so haven’t had a chance to test this for myself. Just wanted to hear others opinions on the matter.
Thanks
@ speedy. Life brine shrimp is the most easy food to grow yourzelf. See my remark. Or use a growing set.
mark, i haven’t used this method i used a large glass bowl, to grow my artemia, but thats a problem in hot days.
They say a good option is what we would call (i don’t know the english term) so i’ll litterly translate it. a leaking bin for a washmachine (link to ducht site: http://www.gamma.com/assortiment/sanitair-en-tegels/wasmachine-en-droger/wasmachine-lekbak/ ).
It works well in a glass bowl as wel but not on really hot days in the sun. Then you’ll have to start over when it cools down.
Speedy..thanks for watching! The ghost shrimp I’ve seen are usually larger in size – at least 3/4″. That’s too big for most non-predator fish to go after in my experience.
Mark,
About breeding/growing your own artemia, it’s risky.
To much parasites can get in the water and also mosquitos not to mention west nile.
How often you feed your fish live food?
I’m from the Netherlands too and we did it already in the 70’s, we were breeding all kinds of insects in water for our fish fresh or salt water.
But we killed also a lot of fish because of it, we didn’t know that time now we know.
Btw live for 20 years in Houston, can’t remember any more where Holland is.
I’ve been uning it for two years and i know others who do it also. Whest Nile is no issue in the netherlands. And i highly doubt musticto’s live in salt water.
Hi Mark,Can we make some kind of deal with your books.I am interested in your book S.W.Tank Cruise Control.If you are going to have a bundle sale again soon.I myself then would like to buy the 5 books. Thank you Terry.
Terry…I’m working on creating a bundle package right now. It’ll be out soon.
Kevin P: As a longtime South Florida resident, I can (sadly) confirm that mosquitoes DO INDEED grow in salt and brackish water. I’m very interested in trying out your method, but it may be difficult for some of us who live in more tropical conditions. On the other hand, live brine is very easy to come by down here, as there are many places that grow out their own.
SPEEDY, another option to use is live mysis shrimp. I see this on Ebay very often, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find. Live mysids are very nutritious, but they may not be quite as “attractive” as live brine for first feedings. I agree with Mark about the ghost shrimp…other than certain wrasses and of course my seahorses, I don’t see many reef fish that will REALLY go nuts over ghosties. Funny story though…I recently added two small peppermint shrimp to my display. My Mystery Wrasse tied on a bib, had a shrimp dinner, and said “Thank you….” while smiling at me through the glass. I suppose I’m not allowed to have small shrimp in this tank any longer.