Discus Diet Question

[Lichan]

Hi All,

I seem to be having trouble getting 5 out of 7 Discus to eat anything other than Hikari blood wooms and Hikari brine shrimp - they just dont/wont - I figured if they were hungry they'd eat, so I didnt feed them for several days and then fed them some tetra bits - NO GO. I have tried flakes, floating pellets, sinking pellets, stick to the glass pellets...and they wont have a bar of any of them..the food just ends up making a huge mess of the tank..and I have to vacuum it out. I have read that such a limited diet predisposes the Discus to a couple of diseases related to poor diet. Is that true ?? Obviously more varied is ideal but can I get away with blood worms and brine shrimp if thats all they will eat ?? I have just read the packet and it says that the ingredients are Blood worms, Vit B12, pyroxidine, l-ascorbyl-polyphosphate, stabylised vitamin C, beta carotene, riboflavin, thiamine mononitrate, biotin, choline chloride, folic acid, pantothenic acid, inositol and niacin. Is this enough vitamins etc etc to keep them healthy ??Not sure what else to do ???? Is there vitamin/mineral drops you can add to the tank maybe ?? Any suggestions or advice appreciated.

[G-1000]

I commonly encounter a similar problem in that 2/4 of my discus dont eat colour bits...

What you need to do is caox them onto it...

So you allow the frozen food to defrost a little bit and add in a bit of dry food (so its soggy), then the fish will be eating it and will usually start to eat it happily thereafter.

Some people have also reported that they have had success with breeders premium dry food - could be worth a try.

Put it this way - if you are getting them to eat hikari-it will tide them over for quite a while... but that diet is exclusively pretty much protein and could lead to stomach upsets/constipation etc...

So try to gradually increase the level of dry food with the frozen and see how it goes...

G

[Ben]

Another method i have tried with tricky fussy discus is to mix some of the preferred food with the food they don’t like to eat. This gets them used to the disliked food.

HTH

Ben