Picky eaters, asking for vegan flake food

[workfortheman]

Well, i'm not sure what's going on here. My question is about my black neon tetras, of which I've had 7 for about a year. They are all healthy, but over the year I've had them some have grown larger and are therefore more dominant, and some have stayed roughly the same size.

My question is regarding their varying eating habits. Is it normal for one fish of the specie to accept a type of food, but not another? It seems that the bigger fish love the frozen bloodworms, but the little ones spit them out! Ack, so much for a delicacy.

Next feeding I closely watch them eating sprulina flakes. Again, the bigger ones eat up but the smaller ones spit it out. They look healthy, and have lived for a whole year, so they must be gettin enough food.

Anyone else have this experience, with other species?

[Tiffi]

I could imagine the pieces are just too big for them. If I have big flake pieces or big tubifex pieces, the smaller fishes will spit them out, maybe try again and spit them back out. Try crumbling up the flakes and maybe cut the bloodworms smaller.

[lmw80]

I agree, the peices may be too big. For the smaller fish, try freeze dried brine shrimp that break up easily.

[workfortheman]

THanks for the advice, you are probably right. In fact, when I feed them FBS, all the fishies enjoy it equally I'll have to try cutting the bloodworms smaller, too

EDIT: on second thought, when I think about the flakes I'm feeding them: I've seen numerous times the smaller fish nabbing the tiniest visible peices, and they still spit it out! Another theory is that they are so spoiled with bloodworms and brine shrimp that they won't take flakes anymore! I guess I'm not fully convinced just yet.