Currents too strong for Lionfish?

Hi, we're having some problems with our Lionfish. We moved him from an old, pretty rubbish tank with little flow, to a new red sea max 250, where the current is quite strong. It seems that he s struggling to cope with the flow, especially when it comes to feeding. He was used to the food moving slowly and could eat the flakes fine, but now the food whizzes around at high speed. To help him we stop the pumps allowing him to feed, but even then he's a bit hesitant in coming up to the surface. We don't want to keep switching the pumps on and off. We feed him flakes which he's been fine with for 2 years in the old tank. Because he's now quite hungry he sadly attacked one of our Damsels, which again he's lived with happily for 2 years.

Is there something we can do to 'train' him to feed in the strong current of the tank?

 

I don't know that you will be able to train the lionfish to feed. They are ambush predators so they do not actively chase down fast prey. You will most likely need to turn the pumps down at feeding time for quite some time until it acclimates to the flow. How long since you changed tanks?

 

THanks for your reply. We changed the tank 3 weeks ago; he was quite docile in the previous tank and was quite happy to live with our 2 damsels. When we moved him, it seems to have activated the hunter in him, probably because he's hungry. He is now eating small amounts if the food flows past him if we keep the pumps on but We'll keep switching the pumps off, hopefully the pumps will be ok for now.

 

Good to hear things are going OK.

 

Wow, that's so different from my lion that I had... he killed anything that fit in his mouth. Never even blinked at flake/pellets... no matter how hungry.

Hope everything works out for you. They are beautiful fish!

 

He's fine now, munching away. Managed to feed him with only 1 pump off, but he does make the effort for some frozen shrimp!