What to feed red neon blue eyed rainbowfish (pseudomoguil Luminatus)?

[DaPrawf]

On Thursday, I got 10 red  neon  blue eyed rainbowfish  (pseudomoguil Luminatus) for my 12 gallon bookshelf tank. They are between 1/2 and 1 inch, with most 2/3 to 3/4.

I let them settle in with lights off until Friday morning. Have tried feeding them X-treme Nano sinking pellets Friday am; Northfin Fry Starter Friday PM; and Hikari Fancy Guppy this am. They mostly ignored the food. When they did try to eat it they spit it out almost immediately. Happened with all three. The only other inhabitants are 2 nerite snails and a bunch of plants.

Water parameters: 

Temp: 75.6

Ammonia: 0

Nitrite: 0 by test strip; 0.25 by API master test kit. It was at 0 the day beforeI added the new fish and had been zero for a couple of weeks.

Nitrate: 10

pH: 6.8

GH: 7

KH: 3

Any recommendations?

 

Edited January 21, 2023 by DaPrawf
Correct typo

[Lennie]

If they show interest in food by attempting to eat it, but spit it out afters, it is mostly a sign that the food is too big for their mouth.

Generally what I do is, crushing the bigger sized pellet food right before feeding it in a level my tetras and pygmy cories can eat it.  I do this a lot with NLS there a+, as medium fish size version is the only one I can find in my lfs. It turns some parts of it a bit powdered side while crashing, which probably is not the ideal for water quality, but I have a hard working clean up crew 😄 Maybe try feeding by crushing the food even a smaller size and to see how they react. Or maybe flake food, easier to crush with hand. I feed mine Omega1 Freshwater flakes like once a week, they like it. They also seem to have easier time eating "Tropical Nanovit". Mine like both granulat and tablet versions.

also you may ask your lfs to learn what they have been feeding them at the store! 

Everyone in my tank always go for the wafers I drop to the tank for my bottom dwellers. As they consist of small particles, they can easily eat it.  I believe. you may find nano tank sized wafers or cut the bigger ones half or so. 

Btw, try to feed smaller portions and observe their reaction closely. We are all tend to overfeed sadly, and uneaten food will affect the water quality a lot.

Hope they start accepting food once crushed!

 

Edited January 21, 2023 by Lennie

[T. Payne]

I feed the xtreme nano to mine.

[DaPrawf]

On 1/21/2023 at 2:08 PM, Lennie said:

If they show interest in food by attempting to eat it, but spit it out afters, it is mostly a sign that the food is too big for their mouth.

Generally what I do is, crushing the bigger sized pellet food right before feeding it in a level my tetras and pygmy cories can eat it.  I do this a lot with NLS there a+, as medium fish size version is the only one I can find in my lfs. It turns some parts of it a bit powdered side while crashing, which probably is not the ideal for water quality, but I have a hard working clean up crew 😄 Maybe try feeding by crushing the food even a smaller size and to see how they react. Or maybe flake food, easier to crush with hand. I feed mine Omega1 Freshwater flakes like once a week, they like it. They also seem to have easier time eating "Tropical Nanovit". Mine like both granulat and tablet versions.

also you may ask your lfs to learn what they have been feeding them at the store! 

Everyone in my tank always go for the wafers I drop to the tank for my bottom dwellers. As they consist of small particles, they can easily eat it.  I believe. you may find nano tank sized wafers or cut the bigger ones half or so. 

Btw, try to feed smaller portions and observe their reaction closely. We are all tend to overfeed sadly, and uneaten food will affect the water quality a lot.

Hope they start accepting food once crushed!

 

Thanks so much.I'll try that, but I'm not sure I could get anything smaller than the Northfin Fry Starter! ;=)

On 1/21/2023 at 2:27 PM, T. Payne said:

I feed the xtreme nano to mine.

Thanks. Maybe they'll start taking it.

[Hoon Aquatics]

On 1/21/2023 at 1:32 PM, DaPrawf said:

On Thursday, I got 10 red  neon  blue eyed rainbowfish  (pseudomoguil Luminatus) for my 12 gallon bookshelf tank. They are between 1/2 and 1 inch, with most 2/3 to 3/4.

I let them settle in with lights off until Friday morning. Have tried feeding them X-treme Nano sinking pellets Friday am; Northfin Fry Starter Friday PM; and Hikari Fancy Guppy this am. They mostly ignored the food. When they did try to eat it they spit it out almost immediately. Happened with all three. The only other inhabitants are 2 nerite snails and a bunch of plants.

Water parameters: 

Temp: 75.6

Ammonia: 0

Nitrite: 0 by test strip; 0.25 by API master test kit. It was at 0 the day beforeI added the new fish and had been zero for a couple of weeks.

Nitrate: 10

pH: 6.8

GH: 7

KH: 3

Any recommendations?

 

Pseudomugils will take dry food fine, but I also recommend breeding this species as they are relatively short lived. Sometimes dry foods aren't enough to produce a lot of eggs. This is what I generally feed pseudomugils:

Live baby brine shrimp will make your life super easy with luminatus and many other pseudomugils.

If you are unable to provide this regularly, frozen micro crustaceans are readily accepted: baby brine, daphnia, cyclops, copepods, etc. You can also use a cheese grater (use caution) to grind down larger frozen foods such as brine shrimp or bloodworms.

In terms of dry food, recently I've really liked Agcore Ommnivore Crumble Bits (0.5-1mm). 

[Lennie]

On 1/22/2023 at 4:53 AM, Hoon Aquatics said:

baby brine shrimp

I was gonna advice it as well but if they already struggle with accepting dry food, I thought maybe feeding live/frozen bbs can make them accept dry food even harder?

I couldn't be sure. Never had to deal with such situation myself

[Rube_Goldfish]

If you've never tried bloodworms before, be careful handling them, because a lot of people have are allergic to them.

[DaPrawf]

Thanks to all. The rainbows loved live baby brine shrimp. Went nuts hunting them down. Now they're taking X-treme nano and crushed flakes.

[Lennie]

Good news! 

Happy to hear that:)