Dwarf Lion Fish

try snake tongs for feeding him

and whole freezer shrimp is another good cheap one just soak them in garlic supplement

 

I'd try to present the food to the fish in the water column, as opposed to letting it hit the substrate, because it looks more "alive" while it's falling/floating around.

A word about tongs...if the fish ever grabs them, there's a better than even chance that it will go "stick shy" on you. If this happens, it's very tuff to "re-wean" the fish, and sometimes, they never go back to non-living foods.

As for "whole shrimp", they are likely too large for the fish to eat comfortably, and may intimidate the fish if it isn't already weaned. Shrimp is a great food, but it's best to keep the food size right around the size of the recipient's eye. Small items are more easily digested, and the fish will actually gravitate to smaller prey rather than larger items.

A good gauge for size is if you see the fish look like it's "choking", the food is too large. The fish isn't ACTUALLY choking, but it's using its pharyngeal teeth to position and deglutinate the food item so it can be swallowed.

IME, garlic isn't necessary with these fish...they simply need to recognize the food item as something they can eat. Fuzzies are an easy wean, generally speaking, altho there is the occasional stubborn specimen. Our little yellow juvie was such a fish, but persistence and trickery paid off.

 

i currently have frozen silver sides, squid, and brine. What should I try the most?

 

still can only get him to eat live brine.

 

How often are you feeding the fish? If you're feeding the fish every day, it's never going to be hungry enuff to try "something new"...a hungry lion is a brave lion.

Lionfish are binge/fast ambush preds, and generally eat a meal and let it digest a day or two before hunting again. That's not to say that a lion with a full stomach won't beg for more, but you shouldn't give in.

If you can get live ghost shrimp, guppies or mollies, they're better for the fish than live Artemia. We're not talking a really small lionfish are we? It doesn't look tiny in the pic.

What you can do is try mixing some thawed mysis into the water when you add the BS...the fish may simply snap some up in the "frenzy", and after a few days, add more and more mysis and less BS. IME, we've had lions in tanks with heavy pod populations, and they generally take a bit longer to wean because they're always hunting pods and are generally sated enuff to ignore dead food, which is what you're creating with the BS.

Lions can go a long time without feeding and still be fine, so you may even want to starve it for a few days. of the foods you have on hand, the squid and silversides would be your best choices. Try feeding it the "head half" and the "tail half"...some fish key on the eyes of their prey while others like to attach from behind, so seeing a fish tail sometimes sets them off.

 

Thanks for the awesome answer! I do have a rather large pod population so that explaibns a lot. I have seen him hunting. I will begin the BS and mysid combo tomorrow. I will keep this thread updated.

 

I think he got to one of my scarlet reef hermit crabs

 

The only way for the lion to eat a hermit is for the hermit to be out of its shell. We keep scarlets in pretty much all of our DT's with no trouble.

What makes you suspect that the lion ate the hermit?

 

There was a hermit ripped in half on the bottom of the tank

 

Fed him live brine enriched with zoe and he loved it. Then right away after fed him frozen brine enriched with zoe and he loved it tricked him