Volitan Lionfish

[gollum777]

Tried the wiggle thing trick,didnt work.Tried it alot too.I dose my feeder fish with Omega 3 and Garlic extract just so he will get some nutrition going. It looks at me then it looks up at the top of the tank.My live shrimps,which I got at the bait store just swim around him doing cartwheels and acrobats in front of him and he still doesnt eat them.Hes such a beautiful fish I really dont want to get rid of him.Ive got him in a 135 gallon tank.

 

[Andy Sager]

Tried the wiggle thing trick,didnt work.Tried it alot too.I dose my feeder fish with Omega 3 and Garlic extract just so he will get some nutrition going. It looks at me then it looks up at the top of the tank.My live shrimps,which I got at the bait store just swim around him doing cartwheels and acrobats in front of him and he still doesnt eat them.Hes such a beautiful fish I really dont want to get rid of him.Ive got him in a 135 gallon tank.

Sounds like a job for just plain ole' feeder guppies or goldfish. I wouldn't add anything to the live fish as their being alive should help provide whatever nutrients the fish needs. B& T shrimp could be too large for his mouth which is why he didn't eat them. They ARE more of a fish eater anyway. If you want to go expensive, you can go with damsels ( blue devils or other elongated damsels, NOT CHROMISes )to feed him ( one of the natural food sources for a lionfish), or live shiners or killifish from a B & T shop. I've never seen a healthy Lion refuse a live fish. The additives might be turning him off. Next suggestion would be black mollies so that they can live for much longer in the saltwater.

Hope this helps

 

[gollum777]

Sure does.....thanx : -)

 

[roladad]

My lionfish ate after 3 days in my tank. I buy fish from store and cut it into pieces and freeze them. I feed him the frozen chunks off chop sticks. As soon as I come near the tank he come right to me waiting. I never fed him live food. I also feed him freeze dried shrimp. Keep trying.

 

[Andy Sager]

My lionfish ate after 3 days in my tank. I buy fish from store and cut it into pieces and freeze them. I feed him the frozen chunks off chop sticks. As soon as I come near the tank he come right to me waiting. I never fed him live food. I also feed him freeze dried shrimp. Keep trying.

It's often easier to switch a lionfish to dead food once he gets accustomed to eating anything in an aquarium. You may have had one that had gone through the adjusting stage before you bought it whereas the OP's fish might have come fresh from the ocean.
As an importer/ wholesaler, I've seen it go both ways. I've had fish come in and take dead food because it saw the other fish eating it and I've had tanks full of lions that only ate live. But as I said in an earlier post, I've never seen a healthy lionfish in a good tank not take a live fish to eat. It's a good barometer of the fish's and tank's health as well.

 

[woody390]

To get mine eating I can a small fish head from some smelt off the body and put it on a stick I put the stick in behind it and tried to make it look like it was swimming towards the lion the left it very close to the lions mouth. As soon as he ate the dead once he carried on. I would definitely not worry about leaving it 3 days though and I'd say once the fish is hungry enough it will eat so try it everyday until he eats up to maybe 5 days

 

[roladad]

I think I was lucky with my lionfish and feeding. Him and the other fish literally follow me around the tank when I come look at them with big pouty eyes hahha

 

[woody390]

Yeah mine does too its brilliant! Just took me a week to get him on dead now he's on it he eats anything including algae flakes and try's to eat algae grazing pads lol

 

[Andy Sager]

I think I was lucky with my lionfish and feeding. Him and the other fish literally follow me around the tank when I come look at them with big pouty eyes hahha

Yeah, that's the thing, I've had tanks with 25-30 lionfish in them and piles of silversides and frozen prawn on the bottom of the tank going untouched and yet I put 1 live feederfish in that tank and they all go after it. It just depends on what stage of adapting to captivity they are at when you get them.
In the stores I've worked at, I usually try to get them onto dead food to make it easier on my customers but I'd let them know beforehand that they should expect to be getting live food for them if they don;t take the dead pretty quickly once in their new home. I'm just sayin

 

[huma-huma]

Yeah, that's the thing, I've had tanks with 25-30 lionfish in them and piles of silversides and frozen prawn on the bottom of the tank going untouched and yet I put 1 live feederfish in that tank and they all go after it. It just depends on what stage of adapting to captivity they are at when you get them. In the stores I've worked at, I usually try to get them onto dead food to make it easier on my customers but I'd let them know beforehand that they should expect to be getting live food for them if they don;t take the dead pretty quickly once in their new home. I'm just sayin

25-30 lions in 1 tank?? That's a bit much. This is a simple problem to fix. Simply don't feed for 4 days, then on day 5 start offering silversides. He will eat at some point. If lions are known for anything, it's eating excessively when they are hungry. Only trick is you have to get them to that point

 

[gollum777]

Thanks for all the helpful advice.....Ill give it another shot...........

 

[Andy Sager]

25-30 lions in 1 tank?? That's a bit much. This is a simple problem to fix. Simply don't feed for 4 days, then on day 5 start offering silversides. He will eat at some point. If lions are known for anything, it's eating excessively when they are hungry. Only trick is you have to get them to that point

As a major wholesaler, it was not unusual for us to have that many lions in a shipment. Don't worry, they went into 2,500 gallons of water not just a single tank

While the starving method might work, it's also abusive (IMO)when just simply feeding them something that is natural to them ( live food) to eat until they get used to eating something else (dead food) seems a but more humane to me. After that, you then need to control your desire to fill up your fish with food.

 

[gollum777]

Good point ,thanks for the great help.

 

[huma-huma]

There's nothing abusive about waiting 4-5 days to feed lions. Lions are not grazers and they swallow their food whole, I'd compare them to some snakes. Because of that, they don't need to eat every day, or even every other day. Going 3-4 days without eating is nothing for them. Eventually, the lion will get to a point where he's hungry enough to eat just about anything. Once he takes that first silverside, he will eat them every time

 

[Andy Sager]

There's nothing abusive about waiting 4-5 days to feed lions. Lions are not grazers and they swallow their food whole, I'd compare them to some snakes. Because of that, they don't need to eat every day, or even every other day. Going 3-4 days without eating is nothing for them. Eventually, the lion will get to a point where he's hungry enough to eat just about anything. Once he takes that first silverside, he will eat them every time

I guess this is where we will have to agree to disagree. Starving a fish for lazy reasons, to me, is abusive.
You are also not considering that when the fish was captured, it wasn't fed for as many as 7 days during the journey back to the mainland. Then again not fed due to being shipped within a couple of days of that arrival. Then possibly not fed at the wholesalers' so that they could be shipped safely soon after that arrival. Then who knows if they got fed at the shop you bought them from? Then YOU want to starve them for another few days????? How can one think that this is not abusive when simply using a live fish will get the fish back on a feeding schedule in minutes not days? Think of it this way, How would you like to be starved until you eat a food that you don't want to eat just because your feeder doesn't want to get you a food you do want? Now I'm not one to humanize animals and believe me, it's not a good thing when people do that. But use the concept. Just something to think about

 

[Airgoose2222]

It took me nearly seven months to get mine to eat shrimp. I didn't try that hard as he was happy with silversides. The only reason I did was because the local lfs here said their supplier of silversides is back-ordered and it would be a while. Only choice I had was to see if he would eat something else (hate feeding it goldfish because of parasites, etc.). One thing I have noticed with mine is that he only eats off of the feeder stick (unless it's live fish). If I drop anything in the tank, he won't touch it. It has to be dangled in front of him for a little while. Raw shrimp is working great now. I would even have to hold thawed out silversides on that stick for him to even eat them. You may get it used to eating off off the stick with silversides and progressing from there.

 

[Andy Sager]

It took me nearly seven months to get mine to eat shrimp. I didn't try that hard as he was happy with silversides. The only reason I did was because the local lfs here said their supplier of silversides is back-ordered and it would be a while. Only choice I had was to see if he would eat something else (hate feeding it goldfish because of parasites, etc.). One thing I have noticed with mine is that he only eats off of the feeder stick (unless it's live fish). If I drop anything in the tank, he won't touch it. It has to be dangled in front of him for a little while. Raw shrimp is working great now. I would even have to hold thawed out silversides on that stick for him to even eat them. You may get it used to eating off off the stick with silversides and progressing from there.

I'm curious, since I've been away from the fish game on a large scale for a while and new diseases have been created, which parasites or diseases, found in freshwater fish like goldfish, also live in saltwater or through the digestive stomach juices of a saltwater fish? Fish like lionfish, in nature, eat the old, the sick, etc fish as their main diet. How does this become a bad thing in an aquarium?

 

[woody390]

I don't see it as abusive I'm not saying you have to do it right away I fed live feeder shrimp for a week to get mine comfy then went to dead food end of the day it's got more nutrition in eating a section of frozen food to eating a small selection of live food so it will be better for the fishs health. Also the problem with feeding goldfish is something to do with e fatty acids in the fish causing the lions liver to swell crushing other organs.

 

[Andy Sager]

I don't see it as abusive I'm not saying you have to do it right away I fed live feeder shrimp for a week to get mine comfy then went to dead food end of the day it's got more nutrition in eating a section of frozen food to eating a small selection of live food so it will be better for the fishs health. Also the problem with feeding goldfish is something to do with e fatty acids in the fish causing the lions liver to swell crushing other organs.

I was only using Goldfish as an example. People have used many different types of fish as "feeders" but again, it has to do more with imitating the natural feeding styles with the change later to a different way. No starving necessary. BTW: I've had people keeping their lionfish on feeder goldfish for years. They also didn't feed the fish 20 feeders when 5 would have overfilled the fish. It's about proper husbandry

 

[Airgoose2222]

It's also a pain to have to go to the store to buy them a couple times a week. I could've set up a tank just for them, but I didn't. Just a convenience thing too.