Fussy Baby Badis

[vanalisa]

Hey fin freaks ~~~~
Some of you may have noticed I'm a bit of a joker, but I'm not gonna kid around on this one, except for thread title, too late now! Ha!

Seriously, this concerns Mr. Luna.
The reason I'm here, ultimately.
My elderly Betta got a new lease on life when he met my 2 Scarlet Badis, Dario and Dario.

I am minus one Dario but that is a topic for another post or a short story or something.

Mister Luna has been gaining weight. I hate to put the blame on any one other but myself but I'm going to have to call out Dario.

What is it going to take for this fish to eat in any normal way? The only thing he will touch is blood worms.
I believe there must be some planetary alignment or some great bigger scheme geometric scenario that must occur before he will eat in a manner that is acceptable to any reasonable creature.

The first time I saw him eat he tackled a huge blood worm and I was afraid he was going to choke to death.

Now I guess it's a roll of the dice or a matter of luck. I've diced I've chopped I've left them whole I've dangled in front of him I've watched him let the worms drift all about him as he frantically comes up to the edge of the tank shakes his head at me as if I had dropped nothing in front of him. He'll take a bite, spit it out and look at me frantically.

What exactly is going on? And how does this concern Mr Luna? Well, Mr. Luna is very conscious of all of the blood worms that Dario leaves behind, sometimes he even swoops in and grabs one before Dario can get at it. this does NOT bother Dario he does not run away he is not frightened of mr. Luna he just swims off and comes over to the side of the tank and looks at me like I have a problem.

It is as if some Magical Mystery worm tour must occur before the worm actually gets in his mouth.

Why won't he just grab the worms that are in front of them why must he refuse the worms 95% of the time it's driving me crazy it's like I have a four-year-old and I don't even have any children but I can only imagine it's like a four year old.

All this is leading up to the fact that I am worried that Dario is not eating enough and I'm worried because mr. Luna is starting to fill out quite nicely.

Earlier I blocked him with a plant hoping that Dario would get the big juicy worm instead of him and he ran off to the edge of the tank turned his back to me and would not look at me for the rest of the feeding session.
Finally out of guilt I gave him his own bloodworm and he let it sit right next to his nose and get old.

I can't handle his passive aggressive behavior any longer and I can't handle the unruly and uncooperative behavior of Dario.

I fear this is going to require drastic measures. Alas, measure I cannot.
Unfortunately I have missed placed my ruler and my tape measure and my yard stick and my astrolabe.

I need a clue.

 

[vanalisa]

 

[Byron]

The first issue is the Scarlet Badis, Dario dario, [nice you took the scientific name as their "name" ]. This fish frequently will not eat anything but live foods. I have had them twice and once got them to eat bloodworms but nothing else (which of course is not healthy in itself) and the other time they would eat nothing. You might try frozen daphnia. You can culture live daphnia in the summer outside. A steady diet of only bloodworms will take its toll eventually, as I found out.

Second problem is keeping this fish in with a male Betta. Your feeding issue with the bloodworms will harm the Betta so that you should try to resolve (by separating the two fish obviously). Most Bettas would be aggravated with Scarlet Badis in their space (the colour is said to be part of the reason) but of course individual fish do not read the scientific text books and may behave contrary to the norm for whatever reason, but it is still not a good idea to chance it and risk the fish. If the Betta is having some negativee effect on the Scarlet Badis (and there is sound reason to assume this) that too will make feeding more difficult.

 

[vanalisa]

The first issue is the Scarlet Badis, Dario dario, [nice you took the scientific name as their "name" ]. This fish frequently will not eat anything but live foods. I have had them twice and once got them to eat bloodworms but nothing else (which of course is not healthy in itself) and the other time they would eat nothing. You might try frozen daphnia. You can culture live daphnia in the summer outside. A steady diet of only bloodworms will take its toll eventually, as I found out.

Second problem is keeping this fish in with a male Betta. Your feeding issue with the bloodworms will harm the Betta so that you should try to resolve (by separating the two fish obviously). Most Bettas would be aggravated with Scarlet Badis in their space (the colour is said to be part of the reason) but of course individual fish do not read the scientific text books and may behave contrary to the norm for whatever reason, but it is still not a good idea to chance it and risk the fish. If the Betta is having some negativee effect on the Scarlet Badis (and there is sound reason to assume this) that too will make feeding more difficult.

Yet another case for research. I can't blame the guy at the fish store for not telling me they were carnivores