With the bass being so new to their pond one of the only things I can think about is are they actually going to eat?
Hook no problem back with this guy. We can even hand feed him, bro
Or close to hand feeding him no big deal though. It's an Oscar
He's gonna eat pretty much whatever I give him
However with big fish and when you get a big fish and you start out with him
They typically take a tremendous amount
longer time period to acclimate to their
surroundings before they'll start eating then you have to make sure that they'll even accept the food that you're offering them because they might be
Accustomed or used to something different. I guess it just takes some patience
But we lucked out here. So bringing in a big fish is can be tricky to get them eat
but what about if there were a wild caught big fish that becomes even more complicated see a wild caught fish isn't used to
pellets and flakes or chopped up fresh foods
They're used to eating other fish or crustaceans or plants or whatever the case might be and in terms of predators
They're typically used to eating other fish like my wild caught black
lionfish saltwater fish but notorious for being
Fish that really prefer live foods now
I've covered the dangers of feeding some types of live foods in the past. If you haven't seen that I highly suggest you watch it.
But nonetheless, we got this guy eating from our hands as well
So individual big wild caught fish
Tend to be some of the most difficult to start eating a prepared diet and most people go directly to feeding them live foods
Where in my opinion if you just give them what they need
Besides food just starve them for a little while, two three days sometimes a week or two for the bigger fish
They'll eat whatever you offer them. For example
these little baby peacock bass
They'll eat pretty much anything I offer but at first they wouldn't you would have to feed them feeders of some sort
Small shrimp etc. I just kind of starved him for a little bit and nowadays the leech whatever I offer for example some chopped up
market shrimp
These guys going to be a blast to feed when they're adults heavy-hittin little guys and
so the giant Rami as well giant gourami is not wild-caught neither is the bite sure that's in there is also
It also helps to have more than one more than one they create sort of this, you know
Attacking mentality like these echoes EXO Don's where they encourage each other to eat
I find that really helps out with freshwater stingrays
for example, which we're gonna drop down a bunch of food here in a moment now, for example
If I only had a couple of these guys the odds of getting them eating right away might be pretty slim but having a few
definitely encouraged as the others to eat and I think that has lots to do with like the
Competition factor where everybody wants to make sure they eat they see the others eating it's safe
You know you get the idea. These guys are the type of fish that eat like that
Typically when you get a bunch of them
But having that many certainly increased my success and odds of getting them to eat in the first place
This is it. Awesome. One of my favorite tanks to feed next to the pond if we could ever get them to eat
I realized that I also just made it sound like all my fish out here are like wild caught where
90% of them are captive raised
And bred one of the keys of success with keeping Asian Arowana and freshwater stingrays where the lights are off right now
I like to keep them on a cycle one of the keys to success with these guys is honestly
Getting to getting them all to eat you get those rays to eat you get the arowanas to eat
You're pretty much home free with that said of course they have
Extravagant requirements in terms of massive aquariums massive filtration massive water changes and if you could provide for them get them to eat
You'll be ok
Actually had an arowana one time it was an Asian Arowana
Couldn't get him to eat no matter what I did
The only thing that would work was I had to pretend I was feeding him live food
so I took a piece of scrap kind of like this little piece here tied it to a sewing string and
Put it in the aquarium kind of fished it through the water like it was a live fish
I got him eating once again, but these guys they haven't eaten for two or three days
They were looking a little skinny which indicates to me with a collector. They didn't feed them and then at the wholesaler they didn't feed
or during transportation
They clearly didn't eat so they might not have even eating for a couple of weeks
Which sounds cruel but totally fine for these guys with big enough to withstand it
But they've been with me for a couple of days now
I'm gonna try to feed them so these guys are still acclimating to their tank and their surroundings
And if I removed the covers they get a little skittish
I've tried dropping in food and with removing bill ignored
so what I want to do is kind of sneak the food in there just lift the cover up a little bit and
Drop it in their general location. I know that the catfish are eating it
But the bass are not touching it from what I can see
So what I'm going to do is ask you guys to kind of take over. Let me know what happens
So clearly I'm gonna know when I edit this, but for right now on video, I'm just not going to know
So we're gonna drop a GoPro in there. You guys can tell me what's going on
Okay that's rolling. I think what I might do is to drop it down
In the center area somewhere just so they see it falling and it is kind of it's a full shrimp cut in half
Down its back. So it is kind of this the shape of a shrimp
The
camera is
Rolling and put a bit of water in here before. I throw it
We pour it through the container in here. Otherwise, I find shrimp just gets slimy and sticky. We're gonna see if we can get it over
In that general area ready?
Now that's slapping hitting the water is typically will entice them to eat I also make sure that by mixing this up
I'm going to close this now
Usually this sort of thing can take weeks
If not longer to get them dip and eating any big fish eating
But what I wanted to do here was make sure they at least taste it and know its food
It's a foreign taste to this aquarium so they should be able to recognize it as food
However, I just need one of them to start eating. Yeah, they look to be all piled up in this corner here. They're not
Reacting to that food at all
I
Wonder what would happen if we kinda move them around
getting them out of the corner instead of just laying there with a bunch of fools
But
they swam out of the corner at least the food is
You can see a little bit of a white that's where it's at
These guys are hugging the bottom literally so they're pretty stressed out still. I mean, we've got to give them a week or so
But that's the whole point of these daily videos if not daily or every other day. Is that like
What I could have done was hide these fish for a while
I've done it before I could have not shown you them until they were eating hitting the surface etc
I've been it could've been like guys look at these great fish. I just got them watch me feed them
There are awesome I got them eating. I'm a superstar. That's not what happens in the hobby all the time
What happens is sometimes you can get big fish and they don't even live past the shipment
They might die on the way to you or the shipment could have been too much for them
It could have been too much of ammonia build-up to my stress and they died a couple of days laters not necessarily your fault
There's not a whole lot you could do at that point
Or stuff like this happens where they're they made it through the shipment. They've acclimated to the tank pretty much the best they can
But they're not eating yet
But it's only been a couple of days and this is when hobbies' starts stressing
Like I just got these new fish and they're not eating. What's the problem? What can I do?
Let them chill out get acclimated to the aquarium it can take days
If not, sometimes weeks depending on the size of the fish, of course, you don't want a little tetra not eating for weeks
It's kind of died
What we can try with enticing them with different foods for a lot of smaller fish I'll go with frozen foods
Typically, my go-to not a lot of fish won't eat blood frozen bloodworms
Or other types of frozen foods, it's like dessert to them. They love it
But you do once you get them nice and fat you want to get them off of that
You don't want them to have blood worms
For example as their exclusive diet eventually of cause constipation fish can't actually digest the skin of a blood worm
Kind of like eating corn what corn is to humans blood worms are to fish if you know what I mean
Tanks temperatures running at about 25 degrees Celsius right now. I might also just bump it up to maybe twenty-eight
Increase their metabolism get them a little bit more active. Anyways, we can call this attempt one
I've never actually documented any of this on camera before I always show you the end result
But I kind of wanted to bring you through the entire process with these guys whether they eat or not. I always start with
Dropping some food in the tank. Usually as soon as I get them see if they'll eat if they don't like he didn't
Oh, wait a couple of days try it again if they still don't accept it. I'll bump the temperature up a little bit
monitor them closely and
Continue to drop more food in and of course
I only leave the food in there for a couple of hours because then it's gonna start to rot
I'll have to remove it and with predators like these guys if they are still not eating I will move to
Tying the food and pretending it's a live fish. And of course last resort. The fish is emaciated. It's dying
You can feed it live fish
But it's probably safer to net the fish and force-feed it I've had to do that before
I know a lot of people will say that's not natural, etc, etc
Okay, I'll let him die if it's not natural and feed him some feeder fish which will probably kill him
Anyways with the internal parasites and lack of nutrition etc. I made a video on that too. Hope you guys enjoyed today's video
Why you letting me rant get mad? I'll see you tomorrow