Cowfish diet

[ChazYork]

Ok to make a long story short, I am housing a very small hovercraft/helmet cowfish for a friend. My friend who has a 120g is moving into a 180g and wants me to babysit the cowfish until the 180g is ready. The thing is that it was a "spur of the moment" purchase and he knows nothing about them except they need a large tank and docile tank mates...anyway somewhere in the process I have the cowfish and it wont eat, it just picks at everything. Any help or way to actually feed the fish so that my others wont steal its food? TIA

 

[Hara]

Your 55 gallon is not really a "big" tank. I would hate to see what happens to your fish if this one releases ostracitoxin because it gets annoyed. This can QUICKLY kill all other tank inhabitants.

 

[i have crabs]

whats in with it anyway? try turning of the pumps/powerheads and feed the fish on both ends of the tank at the same time and he should get some if it wants to eat.
as far as the toxin goes it not near as bad as people try scaring eachother with,ive seen a friend have between 8-10 boxfish and cowfish die in his tank with no other problems from it and i alo had a 8-10" cowfish die of ich lastyear while i was gone for 3 days and no other fish were dead when i got back,i did lose a couple more fish but it was almost 2 weeks after.
back to the not wanting to eat part ive always had luck with garlicguard and misis shrimp or brine shrimp, but im also having trouble getting my new blue boxfish to start eating since its been almost 2 weeks im starting too stress be he is very active and seems healthy so mabey hes eatin behind my back.