Feeding a Lionfish

[walloutlet]

Looking for different opinions on feeding a lionfish. I have a dwarf lionfish, Mombasa species and don't really know what the best live food is to feed it. I have read that feeder goldfish aren't that great, that Mollies may be better and they can live in saltwater conditions (so I read).

I have been trying to get him to eat a mixture of blood worms, mysis shrimp and some formula 1 pellets but he just lies there staring at all the other fish eating. (I am not as brave as some of the other YouTub'rs out there that feed their Lionfish by hand, yikes!)

I was going to start with some ghost shrimp but would like to know some opinions or hear some experience.

The best solution would be to find something that is easy to breed such as guppies or similar but won't produce any future health issues.

[binghamd]

long term feeding of FW live foods is not a balanced diet.

ghost shrimps are good - can be expensive & hard to get
shore shrimp better - cam be expensive & hard to get

best is to try weaning to thawed frozen - raw shrimp or calimari from stuperstore

if you are squeamish abour hand feeding (dwarfs are great for this & will eventualy respond great to the feeder guy) you can use a feeding prong or giant tweezers. acclimate him by feeding live foods with the prong & eventually substitute for the thawed shrimp or whatever. this may or may not take a considerable amount of time (i had a fuzzy dwarf that took almost a year to wean)

good luck & happy reefing

[patrick]

I had the problem before
First of all no guppy,i know he will eat them but it's not realy good for them.i did the ghost shimps for a while,but then after i've trained the lionfish to eat frozen food,shrimp where treats.
Here is how i trainned mylionfish;
start by getting some large frozen krills.
Get some garlic extrem or some kind of appetite stimulatore.
Find some long tweezers or shikabob sticks .
Soak some krills in water and garlic,drop a few drops of garlic in the tank to get him hungry,and you should notice him moving around and hunting,pick out a few pieces of krill with your tweezers and wiggle it in the water trying to get his attention,once he spots it and tasts the garlic in the water he should snatch it up pretty quickly,just make sure you let go of the food once you see him puffing up.
Thats just what i did and it works,after a will i just needed to ad garlic to the tank and just dump krills in the water.
Good luck
Pat

[Adam NS.]

Safeway has a frozen seafood medly. there is cuttle fish, squid, shrimp, mussels all in one bag, my lion fish seems to like this stuff, try different sized pieces of food until you find the one that the fish likes.

[c.m.]

I only have experience with volitans,but found that trying live fresh water fish is a big no no.If you drop a feeder goldfish or guppy in the water,its system survives on freshwater.When the lion eats the fish,he also eats the water in the fish.Over time the lion will suffer damage to its internal organs due to the fresh water.If you acclimate mollies in a qt for a few days,they will work better.I found that lions really only need to eat once a week to survive.What i did,is mark the one week time and everyday tried the garlic and thawed krill.If he didn't eat it for 6 days i would try another mollie.After two weeks he was trained to eat the frozen krill.Now he is a pig, and eats everyday when i feed my other fish.Thats what worked for me.Good luck.

[walloutlet]

Where would one get some Garlic extreme or similar product? My wife does the cooking so I don't visit the grocery store that often. :) Or is this a special marine sauce that we have to get a pet store? I'll check at Safeway tonight.

Thanks for the suggestions guys!

[patrick]

I don't know about homemade stuff,but you should be able to find it at most online pet order place or even Pats pets sell a similar product.

[walloutlet]

Thanks, I just realized that as I was reading over on CanReef about different methods.

[walloutlet]

This darn Lionfish, definitely has its own little personality. Been trying different methods to feed him, he definitely will go after the live food, ie Ghost Shrimp. Trying various techniques to feed him some raw shrimp, krill, whatever... Seeing if he has a preference.

So tonight, I attempted the raw shrimp. Tried the first couple methods of dangling... Nothing... Tried leaving it hang and blow in the wind... Nothing.... Through it on the bottom and blow around. This at least seem to peek his interest. While the hermits have their go at it, small little tug-o-war between a blue legged crab and a bristle worm in a rock. I tried to get photos/video as that was pretty cool, too dark though.

Anyways, now the piece shrimp is floating around the bottom and being watched by the Lionfish. Not eaten, watched. So I am sitting here watching him watch the food. (Hey at least its not paint, I did that yesterday). I leave too watch the football game for a couple seconds, then come back. I think well if he has moved far enough from the piece of shrimp I'll scoop it out. Except, everytime I walk in the room he moves closer to the shrimp, so I am, oooh he's going in for the kill. Nope, more watching. He then after a couple minutes moves back. So I lose interest, football game is making noise. I come back to the tank, damn fish moves closer again. I'm like, yeah, I've seen this game.

So after about 30 minutes now, I figure the Lionfish is just "protecting" his food. Cause I can't bring my self to scoop out the piece as he is sitting there intently watching the food. Or, is he waiting for my finger. I don't know and I am certainly not going to get stung.

Stupid fish, I think he's baiting me....

[Adam NS.]

could be the wrong size piece of food