Discus wont eat dry food!

[Eleocharis acicularis]

I just got my first 6 discus 2 weeks ago.

They won't eat any of the dry foods I have, namely tetra color bits, flake and another pellet food.

They are only eating the frozen bloodworms I feed them using a worm feeder. I also have the problem of the most dominant fish eating all the worms and chasing the others away from the worm feeder. Now I have two worm feeders but some of the discus don't seem to be feeding.

I was thinking about making my own beaf heart mix but feeding them might be a bit hard as they seem to just let the food go pass them when ever I try to feed them without the worm feeder.

Any suggestions much appreciated

[Annie]

As for the flake food and such, maybe they jsut need time to get used to it. Stop feeding them worms for a bit and only give them flake. They will end up eating it. Discus are know to be "piggies". Miine were like that when I first got them too. All they would eat was blood worms. It just took time to train them adn then I just hand fed them after that so all the fishies got a fair shair to begin with and then they could go after all the tid bits that were floaters or left over.
Another thing, have you ever tried Omega One products? The Flakes are great.

[kalebjarrod]

try feeding them the tetra in the morning, they will graze over the day

leave it till night to feed them the blood worms, maybe every second night

works well

[Eleocharis acicularis]

thanks for the advice.

I'll try to stop feeding them worms or atleast only feed them every second night and see if they eat the dry stuff.

I think I'm going to set up a new 4ft tank for them except it will be bare bottom. Should have started off bare bottom like they tell you to! It will make siphoning the excess food away alot easier. I'll put some drift wood and a few potted plants.

[kalebjarrod]

to be honest never done a bare bottom tank

never thought it looked right till i saw proteus's tank

now i plan to have six!

[flukes]

I started planted too, then i made my way too barebottom and realised the difference. Now once i have all my bare bottoms setup i would like to setup a large planted tank and just go all the way. MH lights, go crazy on plants and hook up injected Co2 but for now iam happy with my barebottoms, once i get some bickies ill get the planted up and running.

[weird]

I still can't get my tangerines to eat color bits, and I have reduced their food intake, and also give it first in the morning, and first when I come home from work .... been doing this for 2 weeks. My 2 smaller blue diamonds greedily eat them, and one who was fussy about food started eating them on the third day of this reduce food intake, and color bits at beginning of feeding.

I read flukes comments in another thread and agree with the method he suggests, of basically offering them nothing else for 3 days, and do a gravel vacuum everyday ... eventually they will try it ... that seems to be the problem in my case ... the tangerines wont even give it a go, I know if they do they will love it.

[Mattzilla]

starve them for a day or so then feed a small amount of tetra bits. if they are hungry enough they will eat them. after they have eaten something a few times they generally take to it.

if you make your own beefheart mix add heaps of dry food to it. your discus will definately eat it then. it also helps keep the food together when it is in the water.

i sometimes crush/blend dry food to a powder form when i add it to my bh mix so that it holds the bh together and binds to the meat.

some of my discus used to only eat blood worms...now they eat anything i throw in the tanks because i always feed a variety and try to change what they eat as much as possible

[kalebjarrod]

do you do a beef heart mix

if so put some in that

if not STRAVE the ungraetful little barstards

[Proteus]

Get your hands on some Breeders Premium from GNS Aquariums...

they wont be able to say no to that...