My Discus refuse to eat anything but blood worms!

[ekurutz]

I apologize for flooding this forum with all my posts, but this unrelated to any of my other posts so alas I've started a new thread. My Discus refuse to eat any flake foods or pellet foods that I have been trying to feed them for the last two weeks. for pellets I've been using the Hikari Discus Bio-gold pellet and also Omega Formula 1 pellets, and I've even tried used the standard Tetra Color flakes but nothing has worked. I also make sure to soak my pellets before I feed them, and that still has little effect on the fish...they just let them sink to the bottom.They are literally living off the blood worms! I don't think it's very healthy to be feeding them only blood worms but right now I have no other options! Any suggestions?

[CraigG]

I found Garlic helped mine start to eat other stuff.

My fishes diet varies from,

Pellets
Flakes
Bloodworms
Beefheart
Blackworms
Brine Shrimp (live and frozen)
Mysis Shrimp

Here is the link http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=5016

[gotfish?]

starve them for a day or two then slowly introduce the new food.

[sharkscott2]

I just had this exact same problem with my new discus

I've had luck feeding the new food every 6-8 hours and not giving them any of the food that they already eat. I do this for 36 hours, they may not eat anything for the first 2 or 3 feedings. But will slowly pick up on it. If they don't start eating after the 36 hours i'd go back to blood worms and try again in a week, maybe with a different food.

Once you have them eating it I'd recommend feeding them the new food every morning for several days, that's typically when they're the most hungry.

[rowedder]

I agree with the above person... Feed them your flake food in the morning and then there regular feeding of bloodworms at night. Just make sure you vacuum out any uneaten flake food after an hour or so if they don't eat it. I've had this same problem before also but my discus started to eat the flake about three days into introducing them to it. I also learned that if you get a pinchful of flake and submerse it in the tank for it to sink they like that better than just leaving it float on top of the water. After a week or so they will come to the surface and gobble up the flake without having to sink it. How long have you been feeding them just bloodworms?

[shd17]

I'm also trying to get a 3 of my discus to eat dry food (granules and flakes). So the rest of them will eat dry food but just those 3 would only eat frozen brine shrimp and blood worms. Should I starve all of them for a couple of days or just only feed dry foods to the ones that eat it and hopefully the rest will follow along when they get hungry?

[cyang]

Get some California blackworms from aquaticfoods.com. My discus weren't eating, but I threw in a bit of this stuff and they went insane.

If they haven't been eating for 2 weeks at all, you need to get them to eat something else besides just trying pellets/flakes, just so they can stay nourished. Get them fat and healthy, then starve them to switch foods. Try bloodworms and blackworms and (assuming they are new fish) after they are acclimated switch them to pellet. That's what I'm doing with mine right now.

HTH

[kenhappen2u]

not looking to hijack this thread . but can you guys tell me when you refer to feeding bloodworms and blackworms are you talking about freeze dry ,frozen , or live ?

thanks ....ken

[ShinShin]

Ken,

Most feed live blackworms and frozen bloodworms.

ekurutz,

I wouldn't feed blackworms for any reason, esp. this one. You break them of one bad habit and you'll have to break them of another worse habit. A discus will eat before it will die of starvatin. Simply quit feeding them bloodworms totally and feed them pellets or beefheart or flakes, or whatever you want them to eat. Clean up the food if they don't eat them after a short time. Repeat 'til they eat.

Mat