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Hi, I hope some of you remember me. I used to frequent these forums but after a while I'm afraid to admit but I let my tank go into disrepair and now I'm trying to revive it. I don't think it's an extreme case since all I stopped doing was affording my fish a little tlc and withheld the weekly water changes. A nice batch of hair algae overran my plants(plastic), so yesterday I did a good scrubbing of them. Today along with the fishes' usual flake feeding, I gave them bloodworms as an additional meal around 4:00. I originally had two pearl gouramis but my female seems to have disappeared, but other than that and maybe one clown pleco there weren't any other casualties. So at any rate, back to the bloodworm feeding. No matter what I did the remaining male gourami would not even eat a single bloodworm ,even though I sprayed it in his face using a syringe. He just looked at it and let it float away. What could be wrong?He used to love bloodworms before..........

Anyone?

EDIT: In case some of you are wondering the gourami does eat flake foods but will not touch the frozen stuff.

Last edited by Mkcube at 19-Dec-2004 21:22

You have my sympathy, I just did the same thing about half a year ago with the family tank, except it had fallen quite literally into the "dark ages" (Algae covered every inch of the tank and you couldn't even see the four surviving lemon tetras!)

Anyways, if you withheld the weekly water changes my senses tell me the nitrates skyrocketed, and the algae on your plants are a good indicator of that. Your gourami as a result may be too stressed out to be hungry. Try several smaller daily water changes for about a week or so

The other possibility is that he may not remember bloodworms if you haven't fed them to him for long enough. I withheld earthworms from my fish for a while, and they had to learn all over again what exactly it was that I was dropping into the tank. Once they took a peck at it, though, they started gobbling them up again.

I would reduce the feeding to once a day preferably morning only just after the tank light go on.

He will eat when he gets hungry unless he is sick. he also could be fretting for company. I only have eight opaline males and they love all their food. especialy if it is floating.

Try this if add a few frozen blood worms into a small net and let them disolve of their own accord into the tank. This will now be a floating food rather that too much pushed into its face.

Keith

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