hi hilary here with waterlogged and today's episode of our fish feeding series i wanted
to talk to you about one of the things that i get asked a whole lot now in my 15 years of experience
as a hobbyist as someone who's worked at a local fish store as a public aquarium professional one
of the most commonly asked questions is hilary i've got a really picky fish i cannot get it to
eat what tips do you have though this video if you've got any picky fish is for you so there's
a bunch of different products that are out on the market that act as appetite stimulants that means
that when the fish taste them on their food smell them in the water it's going to help to stimulate
their appetite and kind of make them hungry and make them want to go after the food one of those
products is called entice it's made by seachem and it's kind of an oddball because it smells
like bananas which is a bit strange if you think about bananas in aquariums it's not a smell that
mixes but every single time i've ever used it it works phenomenal and fish that hadn't eaten in a
while or been picky eaters almost instantaneously go back to eating so that is one product that you
can look for to try now another product that is out on the market is garlic right there's a bunch
of different brands that make this but today i'm going to talk about the one by brightwell aquatics
it is garlic power right so let's let's open this up and smell it i don't know about you like leave
a comment below let me know if you are a fan of garlic or not smells like freshly minced garlic
just you know fresh in the kitchen when you're cooking and as good as it smells for us the fish
love it too so when you use this there's a couple different ways for you to use it for your fish but
i'm going to show you how to use it on pellet food now if you don't want to use it on pellet food
make sure to look over you've got instructions right here they give you some different ways
to use it so one thing go ahead and take our pellet food and put in a container right
so this is just for demonstration i'm not going to be feeding this amount to my cow
fish frank he doesn't need this much all right so step after you've got your food go ahead and
shake up that little container all right you're going to pull it out it's got a little dropper so
what your goal in this is to put enough drops on those pellets to saturate them now once your
pellets are saturated go ahead and let that soak for about five minutes after five minutes these
pellets will have been marinating in that delicious garlic power and you can go ahead
and feed them to your fish now hopefully that will help to make them hungry and get them eating again
so that is one option that you have now another option and this is in this one particularly for
some of those butterfly fish and some of those angelfish that when you get them they're wild
caught coming in off those reefs a lot of them are used to eating corals in the wild they're used to
eating sponges and that's not necessarily something that we are able to replicate in
our home aquariums or that we want to encourage in our home aquariums we pay a lot of money for those
beautiful gorgeous corals we want to keep them looking great in our tanks and get our angels and
butterfly fish eating something that's meant for them and that is where angel elixir comes in now
this was formulated to use some of those free-form amino acids that are found naturally occurring
in sponges so those things that they're going to be eating out in the wild they have figured out
a way to put it in a liquid now similar to the other bright well garlic power the angel elixir
is another one you're just going to shake this up you're going to saturate your food with it let it
soak for about five minutes and then you're good to go ahead and feed it to your fish so definitely
another one if you've got some of those picky butterflies and fish that are out there try giving
this a go now one of the next tips that i have for you and this you should be doing all the time
no matter what is making sure that any uneaten food waste is taken out of the tank now this
seems like a no-brainer but this is the reason why i'm telling you for this one it's gonna help your
water quality but two think about if you were a fish and say you know this is the food that i'm
feeding every day there's some food that is stuck in the tank that is just sitting in there over
time it's starting to go bad and it's probably not smelling all that pleasant but it still has
that original some of that original smell of the pellet food so when you go in the next day and
re-feed that food the fish will have been smelling that food that's slowly going bad in the tank
over the last 24 hours it's not really going to be that motivated to go ahead and eat that so that's
one of the really big reasons um that i'm telling you to take any uneaten food waste out of the tank
again you should be doing this every single time you feed typically i'd recommend what
they don't eat in three minutes go ahead and get in there with net and get any of that food out
all right this is my last tip and this might be a little bit controversial
but bear with me i if you have a fish that is being picky that's really not eating
put them on a fast for a day or two days maybe fish will be okay they're not gonna die if you
put them on a diet for a day or two what this does is it builds up the hunger if you're offering them
food every single day and they're smelling that food i i just smelled that i just smelled that you
know they're not going to be motivated to eat but if they fast for a day by the time you go to feed
them the next time they're actually probably going to be pretty hungry and they're going to be more
likely to go after that food now the first feeding that you do after a fast i would recommend to try
and make that their favorite food that they have eaten in the past in addition to that consider
adding some of those appetite stimulants like garlic that will increase the chances of getting
them to get back into eating like normal all right now you know those are just my recommendations
that might not work for every fish so use your discretion if you are trying that method
now the next part of feeding that i want to talk to you guys about today is how to transition your
fish from say eating frozen food to eating pellet food a lot of times when people get new fish in
they can be a little bit on the picky side but they'll they'll eat one specific type
of frozen food right so they're still being fairly picky say they're only eating mysis
well mysis is good for a treat or good for every now and then it's not something that you want your
fish eating day in day out that's like you know us going and getting hamburgers all the time we do
need to get some other food in our diets so my tip for this you thought out your frozen food right
the first time you do it you just give them that the next day when you thaw out
your frozen food that they're already eating add a little bit of pellets into that food
so the frozen food is going to have some of those juices as it thaws that juice is going to marinate
some of those pellet foods that flavor from the frozen food that your fish are already eating
is going to slowly soak into those pellets now over time you're going to increase the number
of pellets and decrease the amount of frozen food that you're feeding this will slowly get your fish
used to seeing those pellets that are soaked in those juices that are marinating in that delicious
frozen food flavor that they like and they will be more likely to take those now this is something
that you have to be patient with it doesn't happen overnight it may take a couple of weeks
to get them to transition but once you do have them eating pellet food you are going to be
ready to go if you have to go out of town you can set up an auto feeder with those pellets and your
fish aren't going to have any problems all right let me know if you try this and it works hopefully
it does if you've enjoyed this video leave a comment and let me know and i will see you next
time you