advice needed on baby discus asap!

[kiko_matsin]

i just acquired baby discus from a friend...about quarter in size. well, my question is how can i wean them to eat colorbits or any dried food? i think they been accustomed to eat cbw, bw and bbs. i tried to feed them crushed colorbits and flakes, but they just ignore it? another problem is i will be going for a vacation on almost whole of May...i only have a month or so...to make them eat dried food! i already bought automatic feeder just to make sure they will have food regulary.

please any advice...so i can have a wonderful vacation in which i been looking forward for a long time. thanks

kiko

[nolefan]

I would mix the flakes with what they are currently eating .Make sure you raise your water temp to 86 degrees.Sometimes this method works sometimes it does not .

[Cosmo]

It's usually best to introduce new foods at the morning feeding when the fish are the hungriest. There are a couple of problems you potentially face though..

One is that fish this young need to eat to stay healthy. While an adult Discus, and perhaps even a juvenile, won't starve itself to death rather than eat unfamiliar food... any prolonged period without nutrition at the age/size you describe can have undesireable consequences... possibly even including death.

Next is a month long vacation on autofeeder. Hopefully you'll have someone watching over the fish and doing WCs. If not, you may want to consider moving the fish to a friends house while you're away. Again, the age/size works against you since they are more sensitive to water quality and a month of unsupervised feeding and no WCs will prove very problematic.

Jim

[kiko_matsin]

thanks for the quick reply. i'll keep that in mind. appreciate it so much. thank God there's a forum like this..especially for a newbie like me..more power!