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Hi all, I am a newbie here so your wisdom and guidance is very much appreciated. Please can you help me?

How do I get slower moving fish such as discus to eat? I got a lot of faster fish like danio (they are always the first to eat), angel fish, guppys and swordtails and neon tetra in a tank. I noticed that the discus is very slow moving and worried that it is not eating as most of the food are gobbled up by the faster moving fishes. Feeling very sad and annoyed and frustrated. Please help



Eugene.

Alot of times it is not good to keep slower fish with fast fish. Try to get sinking food for the discus if they will not come to the top to eat. Try to put the food right over them. Feed the danios first, on an opposite side from where the discus are and see if that helps any.

What size tank do you have and what are all the tankmates (and how many of each)?

If you simply can't get the discus to eat, you may need to think about setting up a tank just for them...or taking the danios out, since they are a bit selfish when it comes to food.



*Kristin*

Some people try to place the food in different places in the tank, so the fast fish will go for some food on one side and allow the Discus to feed on the other side. This may work, but it's not fullproof. Since the other fish are indeed faster, they sometimes can just move to the other end of the tank and nab it before the slow ones can.

The best method is to separate the fish. This is what I had to do in the case of my Sun Catfish and my Royal Plec. The Sun Catfish started out as a small fish, so it was never a problem with the Royal Plec... But then it grew big enough to actually swallow the algae wafers that the Royal Plec gets. Trouble. The best solution in this situation is to prevent it from happening; just don't keep slow moving fish with fast moving fish. This, in my opinion, is the best solution.

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The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.

I haven't fed discus but to get food to slower and smaller fish I put some floating food on the surface at one end of the tank for the fast tetras and then used a dropper to feed frozen food to the other fish. You can reach down in the tank with the dropper and squirt it in front of the fish but that won't holder large bits for any fish of good size. For the plecos I do much the same thing but hook food onto plastic coated paper clips to make it sink really quickly while the other fish are distracted. Eventually target feeding slower fish just gets too annoying and time consuming and I always ended up setting up a seperate tank or overfeeding by alot so that some makes to the bottom in the case of the plecos. Not a problem with my lightly stocked and heavily planted tank but in an average or heavily stocked tank water quality issues would be guranteed with my feeding schedule.

Before I read the replies I was thinking of placing half of the food at one end of the tank and when the fast movers are the add the other half. Now you have to be extremly fast at the same time try to feed the slower fish.

I agree slow feeders should not be kept with the fast feeders as the slower feeders will go hungry.

Have a look in [link=My Profile] http://www.fishprofiles.com/forums/member.aspx?id=1935[/link] for my tank info

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Keith

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Your discus are probably unsettled by this wizzing around of your danios. This wont help with getting them to eat. What size tank are all these fish in?

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Do you slow your filter down at all when you feed the fish? I notice it gives my fish a few extra minutes to eat and also allows a little bit to sink for the slower guys (Mainly, my aeneus Catfish . .. not nec. slower but bottom feeders mainly). I don't leave the filter off but stop it for just a few minutes to let some food settle.

I also use the sinking pellets as stated previously. That seems to work for me.

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