Frogfish help

have a 2 inch painted frogfish, bright orange. Hes been eating live ghost shrimp and i was able to get him to eat one peice of dead silverside. I tried feeding him again the day after the next and he ate 2 more ghost shrimp but wouldnt quiet go for the silverside. He eyed if for a second but then lost interest. What is overfeeding for this guy? hes stalking some of my clown fish so i know hes hungry but he shows no interest today, maybe if i let him get al ittle more hungry? anyone have any methods they have used to train them onto frozen / dead food. I soak it in zoe already to help negate the vitamin b1 problems most have.

 

I would tell you to starve him and hopefully he will eat the frozen but I don't want your stock to end up missing.

Its not Droid, it's me fishies.

 

YEA!!!!!! im gonna try it, maybe ill get a blankit and do some sniper feeding tactics.

 

its official..... came home from work and one damsle is MIA...... the frogfish stomach is bulging loL! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO POOR DAMSLE. oh well. i wanted to get rid of them anyways so i guess this is a lot easier then netting them out HAHAHAHAH! MAUAHHAHAHAHA

 

This may sound bad, but the first thing that popped into my head was the song from lion king.

 

hahahahhahaa. the frogfish is super super bright orange, and looks very happy though. I cant denie him that for taking him out of the wild 8( i feel bad enough for that already. I dont mind if he eats my cheapo little clown or other two damsles really. But....... i do have plans to craigslist a new tank just for the frogfish asap. Just a $$ issue.

 

He will eat anything that is his size or smaller. They are best kept in a species only tank. I think you should have done some more research before buying him.

 

ive done all the research i can except tactics to get him on frozen foods. I know what it will eat, i know its best kept alone. I knew exactly what i was looking for before i saw him. FYI its not reccomended to even keep two frogfish together becuase one might decide to eat the other one. Is your research lacking?

 

its not a good idea to keep them with anything smaller or larger than them. they need to be ALONE. with that being said, i kept one with two clowns without any probs for a month. then it died because i fed too much on accident.

best bet is to take it out into another tank. or more fish are gonna dissapear.

 

frogfish will eventually go after all your fish in the tank. They will eat not only smaller fish but larger fish, which will kill them. The biggest problem with frogs are not starving, but over-eating. I wish I could remember this article but it was in Coral a couple years back....basically this researcher had a coral banded baby shark and just got an angler. The angler tank was not quite ready so he threw the angler in with the shark. He came back an hour later and could not find the shark....he looked and the angler had the tail hanging out of his mouth (the shark was 2-3x bigger). The angler died several days later, and the guy did a necropsy and found the shark pretty much intact inside his stomach...very little digestion.

And yes, anglers will eat other anglers (but that was not what guitarman was stating...just that it should be in its own tank!) My lfs ordered 2 of them for me once (white one and black one) and for some reason placed them together. They were the same size adn everything.....when I got there the white was gone and the black one was swollen. I got the black one and in a couple days he died because of overeating of the otehr angler

As long as there is live food in the tank (ie other fish) he most likely will not eat frozen. I have kept several in the past, and they ALL have been in their own tank. Might consider setting up a small nano or something for him.

Amount to feed, they do not need to feed more then 2-3x a week. and the amount depends on the size of the angler. I had small ones and I feed 1-2 pieces of krill a time.

He is eating so you dont have to be really concerned right now. Almost all of mine eventually took frozen food, all but one and I had to feed him live ghost shrimp the entire time.

How I got them to eat was I used a wooden skewer (shishkabob) and placed krill (soaked in HUFA and vitamens and garlic) I placed the skewer in the water in front of him and gently "made it swim" like it was a live fish. I did a little jerky motion with the krill. Make sure you dont pierce the krill in a way that he will have to fight to get it off, he will loose interest fast! If he didnt eat, then he didnt get anything else. Tried again later that day, and for the next couple days until he either ate, or I had to buy live. Then when he had live I did not give him much. While the live was in there, I did the stick thing again around the live food to see if he would grab it then. It took a couple weeks usually to get him to eat frozen. Unfortunatly i had to do the stick thing the whole time with all of them.

I have heard of others using fishing line and tying it gently around the krill and placing it and leaving in the tank in front of powerhead to make it swim.