Saltwater & Reef

Platiesareawesome · 06-25-2013, 06:28 PM

Hello! yesterday I got my first fish, 3 ember tetras. I fed them today, but they would just spit the food out because it was too big for them. ( I feed them new life spectrum small fish formula, and the pellet size is 0.5 mm). Can I split/crush the food? How can I do this? Thanks!

Khazmachi · 06-26-2013, 05:02 PM

You could try crushing it up. If that doesn't work buy some flake or other type. It'll give you an excuse to see if anything is new at your LFS. I like to feed a variety of food anyway.

librarygirl · 06-26-2013, 05:41 PM

That's the same food I feed my embers, they don't seem to have a problem with it. You can try grinding it a bit with a spoon and see if that helps though. Either that or they don't like the taste; mine seem to like it but maybe yours are finicky.

You can also try soaking some in Garlic Guard, see if that helps make it more palatable for them. Hikari also makes a small fish pellet you can try.

Rivercats · 06-26-2013, 06:00 PM

You could also call the store and see what food they were feeding. New foods don't always go over very well in the beginning. Also if you could get a few more Ember's as they will feel much more secure in larger numbers.

Platiesareawesome · 06-26-2013, 06:30 PM

Thanks for the answers! I crushed the food and gave it to them, and they ate the food like tiny little sharks! The only problem is after a minute of the tetras eating, I tried to net the food out so the tetras wouldn't over eat, but I couldn't as the powder/pellets was/were too small to net out of the water, so the tetras continued to eat. Is this a problem?