Feeding live bloodworm

"Mary Burns" wrote in message
...

"Gill Passman" gillspamattaylorpassmanspam.co.uk wrote in message
.. .
Hi,
This is a dumb question but I've never fed any live food to any of my
fish -
they take and enjoy the frozen stuff. However, I've got a problem with
some
Ich ridden Clown Loaches that are just not feeding and are getting
weaker.

I thought I might try giving them live bloodworm. Do I just stick it
all the
tank at once, buy some sort of feeder, or just put the required amount
in
the tank and find a way of storing the others?

Thanks
Gill

I use the feeders for bloodworm for my angels. For clowns, it sinks
very quickly to gravel, much faster than frozen. As it's the first
time, I would add a few by hand or turkey baster, near where they feel
safest at first, about 6 each. To keep it fresh, keep in covered jug,
change most of water every day (tap water not tank) and keep in fridge.
It should last 5 or 6 days. They should find it irrestible. They will
eat as much as you give them, so increase amount once they like it,
which hopefully is straightaway so they get better quickly, pushing
each other around as they eat it, a mini rugby scrum. All my fish love
it. Mary


Mary, can you adjust your program setting to not add the before your
response so that we can distinguish your text from the post you are
answering to? This particular post was obvious to distinguish, but your
mid-posting is invisible to find.

Gill, I've never seen a case where Clowns which didn't eat frozen
bloodworms ate live bloodworms, but this is possible if the fish were
wild-caught and have simply never adjusted to dead or processed foods. I
hope this works for you, but I don't recall Clowns being difficult to
adjust to processed foods.

I can't recall if your Q-tank was hard water or soft. As far as I know,
the majority of Clowns are wild-caught, and I've found that Clowns
acclimate poorly to hard water. After acclimated, they seem fine, but I
still have my doubts about the wisdom of keeping botia in hard water
set-ups (which is something I've done and am doing myself).

A little speculation, but it's possible that your two batches of Clowns
may have come from different environments. Some are wild-caught and
shipped by exporters who are not much more than bagging/transport
stations collecting the local harvests (which include local small-medium
fish-farming operations). I would not be surprised to find that many
wild-caught are directed to farm pools (perhaps they were undersized for
sale, or to extend their selling season etc). With evaporation, these
pools would probably become much harder, so some Clowns might come from a
pseudo-farmed environment (and would acclimate more easily to processed
food and harder waters).

This might go part way in explaining what you're seeing. Coming from the
same store is no clue. Even coming from the same distributor or supplier
is no clue. My importers could *usually* tell me origin history if I
asked, but they gave me the feeling that it wasn't always entirely under
their control ;~).
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