Engineer Goby Food (again)

[Donya]

Back again with another question about my engineer goby and his strange eating habbits. The main question: would a diet of primarily dried foods, sinking krill pellets specifically, be an ok way to go, or a bad idea that could lead to digestive/other problems?

The reason I ask is that, after having accepted only prawn, then only squid, and then most recently only frozen krill, this fish seems to have decided that what it really wants is the cheapo stuff I used to just toss in as a treat for my conch periodically. The goby will now eat as many pellets as it can find while showing no interest in pieces of expensive krill meat that float past. Given that this fish hasn't been willing to touch a food like that in the >2 years I've had it and has been so picky about other foods, I'm a bit surprised to see so much enthusiasm for regular pellets. I use the krill pellets as a staple part of the diet of my non-CUC hermits and some other inverts and it works well for them, but I'm not sure how good the stuff is if used that way for fish.

 

[SkiFletch]

Heh, well what's the ingredient list on these pellets?

Stating perhaps the obvious, but if that's the only thing you've been able to get him to eat and he's been living on it for 2+ years, perhaps that's not a bad thing...

 

[Donya]

Doh - I said krill pellets; just checked and they're omega one shrimp pellets. I had some krill pellets in the past, but that's not what the goby is eating.

This is the stuff: http/www.petsmart.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3302106
"Ingredients:
Whole Shrimp, Whole Salmon, Cod, Whole Herring, Seafood Mix (including Krill, Rockfish, Shrimp, Squid, Clams, Salmon Eggs and Octopus), Wheat Flour, Fresh Kelp, Spirulina, Lecithin, Astaxanthin, L-Ascorbyl-2-Phosphate (source of vitamin C), Natural and Artifical Colours, Vitamin A Acetate, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Vitamin E Supplement, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Riboflavin, Niacin, Pantothenic Acid, Folic Acid, Biotin, Inositol, Tocopherol (preservative), Ethoxyquin (preservative)."

The goby hasn't been living off those until this week; prior to that he would only accept frozen meaty foods. His pattern of behavior towards food has been to only eat one one type for a few months, then switch exclusively to another type for an equally long period of time, and then do it again, etc. If eating pelleted food won't be a problem, it sure does make for easier feeding. I just wasn't sure if marine fish can have the sorts of digestive problems from eating exclusively dry foods that some freshwater fish can get.

 

[Adrinal]

The "problem" with these guys as they get larger they increasingly become detrivors(sp). Let one bite you... its like a drunk grandma trying to eat ice cream (no disrespect to our gramses intended). Weak jaws, sandpaper for teeth. They are used to lazily pulling the flesh off of rotting fish who have sunk below the kill zone (or so it seems and so I have read).
Kill the pumps, use some tongs (or if your a bad apple like me, hand feed them) and fan away any aggressive eaters. If its meat they will likely eat it, they just wont work for it.

Do mix up the diet. Even trick them to eat some greens on occasion.

 

[SkiFletch]

Well, Omega One's food is pretty regarded as being very healthy for fish. Good foods will have lots of meaty ingredients and not a lot of filler like wheat. Especially the first few ingredients in the list (as they're listed in order of concentration). Those pellets (which I use too) are very good for fish, so I wouldn't be too concerned Donya

 

[Donya]

The "problem" with these guys as they get larger they increasingly become detrivors(sp). Let one bite you... its like a drunk grandma trying to eat ice cream (no disrespect to our gramses intended). Weak jaws, sandpaper for teeth. They are used to lazily pulling the flesh off of rotting fish who have sunk below the kill zone (or so it seems and so I have read).
Kill the pumps, use some tongs (or if your a bad apple like me, hand feed them) and fan away any aggressive eaters. If its meat they will likely eat it, they just wont work for it.

I've seen others about the same size feed pretty easily, but...well, if you could see this fish, the feeding difficulty might make more sense lol. Something had a pretty good go at mauling his head prior to when I got him, so he's a one-eyed, scar-covered wonder with a sneer for a mouth. I don't think he's got a good sense of smell, because he can't locate even the stinkiest of food if it gets outside that one eye's field of vision. Even with the pumps off, it's a game of pushing the food around for ages, recapturing it with a turkey baster when it gets pushed away by accident, etc. The goby even has some trouble finding the pellets, but they don't drift so I can stay out of the tank and just let the fish munch sand until it finds the food.

Well, Omega One's food is pretty regarded as being very healthy for fish. Good foods will have lots of meaty ingredients and not a lot of filler like wheat. Especially the first few ingredients in the list (as they're listed in order of concentration). Those pellets (which I use too) are very good for fish, so I wouldn't be too concerned Donya

Thanks Ski!!! Glad to know that it'll work out - at least until my fish decides to do another one of his cold-turkey-style food preference changes.