Cardinal fish eating?

[sawyerc]

My new bangaii cardinal fish doesn't seem interested in food. Pieces of frozen food shower around him and he doesn't even seem to notice. When I put brine shrimp in, though, he went crazy eating them. Do I need to keep feeding brine mixed with frozen until he'll actively eat the frozen food, or will he eat the frozen food when he gets hungry enough? It's a well established reef so I'd think he'd have lots of pods to eat if he wanted. I'm going to try some fresh squid tomorrow. I've never had a picky eater before so I'm a little worried. My new yellow tang has been picking at algae (I think) throughout the reef. As long as he has some algae to eat from the reef should I worry about giving him nori and such? I'll give him a little macro from my fuge every once in a while if nothing else. Thanks everyone!

 

[Ben1]

I feed my cardinals mysis shrimp and they love it. My tang isn't happy or as colorful as usual unless he gets a few inchs of seaweed sheets every few days. The rest of the days I feed the tank sweetwater zooplanton (daphnia) sp? and frozen mysis.

 

[HookedOnFish]

My Cardinals eat mysis like crazy. I guess they are doing ok, they have breed twice in the last 2 months.

Mike

 

[Baianotang]

They like live food.

 

[Ben1]

Mysis is as healthy if not better then most live feeds, and is definatly better then live brine. I also have my pajamas regualrly breeding heres a picture from yesterday.

 

[sawyerc]

Cool, thanks everyone. He actually seems a little more eager to eat after the brine... he'll go after pieces of squid and scallop now, but I'll probably move to mysis in the future.

 

[sawyerc]

And congradulations to all you new fathers out there! In my opinion there is nothing more rewarding. (I miss my ciclid days.. )

 

[Jonddk]

My Cardinals wouldn't eat frozen at first either. But like yours, they would eat live brine. I then mixed frozen brine shrimp with the live brine. After a few days they would eat the frozen now problem. I then moved them up to frozen mysis. Now they will pretty much eat anything I feed the tank, including flake food and pellets.

Jon