So fustrated!!!!

[ram man]

Ugh, so I wasn't to sure where to put this since there is no "perch" category for fish. I recently bought a trio of dario dario, and I can't get them to eat anything! Nothing! I've tried frozen cyclops and blood worms, the first night I had them they tried eating the blood worms but the worms are just to big for them to swallow, so they would spit it out suck it back in and so on... Picked up some cyclopeeze that they sell at my LFS, thought this would do the trick since they are the perfect size for these little fish, they just spit them back out! I had a trio before that would eat blood worms, given it would take them 5 minutes to eat 1 worm considering their max size is 2cm... Has anybody else had problems with these fish being finicky eaters? They seem to be picking at whatever is living in the plants, I can't see these creatures they are hunting though so it gives me no peace of mind that they are getting what they need to thrive.

Anybody else keep these? or atleast have any ideas?

 

[Matt Nace]

How about live foods, brine shrimp, mosquito larvae. Maybe a differant brand of the frozen foods might work. Since they tried the blood worms..maybe live or another brand would work. Did you make sure the worms were not too cold yet from being frozen..perhaps they sence the cold and were spitting it out for that reason.

Hope they eat soon for you.

 

[straitjacket]

Start with live.
Brine shrimp, live chopped bloodworms (whole ones are too big), daphnia, micro worms, etc.
Then you can start giving them frozen (bloodworms, brine shrimp). That's about as easy as it gets.
I have heard very few counts of success with people trying to get Dario or Badis sp. to take prepared foods and so far it's been with golden pearls. I've never even had one Dario or Badis sp. that would take freezedried. I feed mine live and frozen.

 

[OrangeCones]

I've fed mine live California blackworms with no problem to start. Microworms also work well and can live in the water for a day or so. You can also shave small slivers of a frozen block of bloodworms for them once they will eat non-live foods.

They are difficult to acclimate to aquarium life without live foods initially, as many are wild-caught.

 

[ram man]

Yeah, I've been trying to get them to eat frozen, I'll try to chop them up as best I can. I didn't have any problems when I had them before.

 

[straitjacket]

Have you noticed any parasites?
Badis and Dario can be a a bit picky, especially at first, but not terribly so and should start to eagerly greet you at feeding time.
I would suspect parasites if they were being too fussy and shy.