Hand Feeding Fish (Elephant Nose)

[Slarty Bartfast]

Just picked up an elephant nose and people are mentioning that they are feeding them by hand, eventually.

So, if you have a fish you hand feed: What technique did you use for feeding to get them to come to your hand, and what are you feeding them?

Thanks!

 

[tropicfishman]

I hear bloodworms works great to get fish to hand feed, just hold it between your fingers in the water until they come and eat it

 

[sir_dudeguy]

i had an elephant nose once...bad experience. loved the fish, but it wouldnt eat ANYTHING! tried live brine, bloodworms, tubafix, even frozen of all the stuff i just listed. wouldnt touch flake either. one time tho, he did nibble tubafix worms. i tried other stuff too, just cant remember.
the water was fine and everything, must have been a bad fish. It really made me mad tho, cuz i got it from an lfs that i really liked and trusted, never had one of their fish die....

anyways, what tropicfishman says is exactly what ive heard. i also saw it at that lfs too, where the guy had his own tank behind the counter, and he would always hand feed it

 

[Slarty Bartfast]

well, he(she?) just died, I don't think he acclimatized to the tank. fed him frozen bloodworms and saw him eat a few times, but I think the new environment finally stressed him out. it's a wide 40gal, with plenty of hiding places, rocks, vegetation. Going to try again, I've tested the water and it looks fine. So I'll drop the $20 and get another. Every time one dies, though, I feel like I've let God down, a little bit, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, the bloodworms are little tiny things, the idea of wiggling it around just doesn't make sense to me, I gotta figure that my big old hand in there will be way more scary than the temptation of the bloodworm, but we'll see. What I want to find is LIVE worms for a while, to make sure it's eating, then switch to frozen....