How long does your clowns take fake?

[bcjm]

My clowns are about 4 weeks old. They still don't take the flake food well. I put the flake food in the tank each morning. They don't seem like to eat that at all. Tired of hatching brine shimps. Maybe I am using the wrong kind. Any suggestions?

Thanks
Bob

[RHCP]

What kind are you using?

I use a mixture of live brine and frozen brine. Slowly take the live out and then try flakes. I use formula 1 flakes soaked in selcon as well as prime reef flakes and prine shrimp plus flakes.
HTH
jeff

[michaelg]

The young fire clowns that I have would not initially eat flake food. I started them on my coral mush, and after that they took right to the flake (now eat anything I drop in). Seems young clowns (probably other fish as well) are picky eaters and become less descriminating with age. If you are the bcjm in the DC area (think so a bcjm wrote about them at wamas.org), I can give you some of my coral mush, if you want to try it.

You could also try frozen mysid shrimp. One of the locals just ordered a large amount direct for seahorses.

The mush recipe (modified from Borneman's recipe at MARSH.org)
shrimp, mussels, 1 whole small fish, 1 squid, meat and guts (not the gills)from a maryland blue crab, and scallops, nori, some other type of dried seaweed found at the asian market that looked tastey, selcon, vitachem, tahtian blend, powdered spirulina, and rotifer size golden pearls.

Mixture gets ground up in the blender with some tank water and frozen in ziplocks. Worst part of making it is the cleanup and residual smell in the kitchen for a few hours. I wish my food processor would work, but the first time I tried to use it instead of a blender, I ended up wearing a good portion. Be wary of spouse abuse if you try this at home :)

Michael

[bcjm]

Michael,

Yes. I am the same person from DC.

Thank you for the recipe. I will try to do it next time when wife is out of town.:D

I did not feed the clowns this morning and came home late after work. Gave them some formular 1 flake. They started to feed on the that. Poor things must be hungry. Just wondering if 4 weeks are the normal time for clowns to eat flake food.

Bob

[RHCP]

What kind of clowns have you got? My occelaris will take flake as early as 3 weeks and my premas biaculeatus take till about 4 weeks to eat it. Once a few start to eat it the rest should pick up that it's food.
HTH

[bcjm]

they are tomato clowns

[filkemp]

Continuing with this old thread, do you just sprinkle the flake on the surface of the water or soak it so that it drops down to the clowns on the bottom?

[Armando]

my tomato fry start eating flake around 3 weeks old. i grind it to very small pieces.

[filkemp]

But do you let it sit on the water surface or make it water logged so it sinks to the bottom?

[FFFrog]

I let it sit on top. I grind it and sift it through a brine shrimp net. My ocellaris are on nothing but flake before 14 days.

[MarinaP]

Bob!!! Where have you been?!

I have some CPeeze, drop by any time :)