How do I ween a fish off of live food????

[MetalHeadX343]

I have a Lima shovelnose catfish and i'm trying to ween him off of goldfish and i don't know how to. A guy at petsmart told me to feed him a worm or a cricket or brine shrimp or my crab and shrimp pellets to him when he's excited and hunting down the fish. The only problem with that is the goldfish i bought were just big enough to fit in the catfishes mouth. So he only eats one every day or two. I'm going to purchase some rosey reds because they are alot smaller. I did have about 20 guppies to feed the catfish when I bought him and he ate eight of them in one night.

If anyone know what kind of food I could feed him such as giant meat pellets or one of those packaged food for big fish that would be very helpful.

 

[jetajockey]

I've never dealt with that particular fish, but I have weaned many fish off of live foods. Some wild caught fish are particularly difficult. The first thing I would do is cut him off of live foods completely. Get a pellet that matches the size of the fish well, assuming he eats goldfish then it will take a decent sized one.

Just feed him the pellets once a day, if he doesn't eat them, clean them out and try again the next day. They can go several days without eating, and sometimes it takes making them hungry to get them to switch.

One other thing you can do is to move him to dead food first, like thawed bloodworms, and then to prepared food.

 

[MetalHeadX343]

Well I starved him for four days after I he ate all the guppies and he wouldn't touch anything. I figured he would eat a 1" section of a Canadian night crawler but he wouldn't I've tried this several times. Then I found out that I had a bunch of this stuff called "Large Freeze Dried Medley" and it consists of Red Shrimp,krill and Mysis Shrimp. It's suppose to just be a treat but he wouldn't touch it. I know that they love crustaceans but he won't go for them either. So how long would I have to stop feeding him for? I don't want a dead catfish, so how many days until I feed him some live fish or do you think when he's on the brink he'll snap and just take what he can get?

 

[MetalHeadX343]

Here's the catfish, well never mind it won't accept php file

 

[jetajockey]

I'd let a larger fish go for a week+ just to see. Some fish just will not transition to prepared foods, I have a grass pickerel that refuses to eat anything but live food, however I have some smaller ones that now go after pellets while they are sinking, after feeding them very sparsely (1x a week-ish), it seemed to make them a little more apt to eating other stuff.

Just wanted to add that if this is a live-food only fish then you may be out of luck feeding prepared foods, but its still worth a try. At the least I'd try to get him over to other forms of live food, so you have more options. Also consider gut loading feeders with high quality pellets/flakes.

 

[toddnbecka]

I've never heard of a Lima shovelnose eating pellets, they're ambush predators. Have you checked the monsterfishkeepers forum? More likely to find other ppl with personal experience there.

 

[Terrance]

Tie the worm to a string and dangle the worm right in front of your fish

Its like fishing.. they'll eventually take a bite at it since they're hungry!

I'm also trying to ween my fish off live feeders.

 

[MetalHeadX343]

Tie the worm to a string and dangle the worm right in front of your fish

That's the dumbest thing i've heard today... now wheres my fishing line at....

lol great advice i'm gonna try that thanks

 

[MetalHeadX343]

I've never heard of a Lima shovelnose eating pellets, they're ambush predators. Have you checked the monsterfishkeepers forum? More likely to find other ppl with personal experience there.

Hey thanks for that advice. I know that there's some kind of huge ball of meat that are designed for huge fish like mine and I can ask the people on that website. Thanks a lot. (No sarcasm intended.)