My fish hate pellet food

[mrsjoannh13]

I have four glofish tetra fish. They are fairly small so I'm assuming they are young (maybe an inch long at this point). This is my first tank and the fish are doing well. They have a good appetite and will majorly chomp down on flakes. They REALLY don't seem to like pellets. Only one (the largest of the 4) will eat pellets (and even that one kind of plays with the pellets and spits some of them out). I'm wondering if they are too small for pellets? Should I keep rotating in pellets or just stick with flakes (which they annihilate) and 3x weekly bloodworms or daphnia? Do I need to rotate in pellets with flakes for nutrition purposes? Any advice is appreciated!

Also - tacking on to this... the fish HATE light. I mean seriously hate light. I have yet to be able to turn the overhead LED or blue light on without them scattering for cover. I just leave the room overhead light on during the day and that's it and they seem happy. this is not a planted tank, so is it okay to basically never have the aquarium lid light on?

Thanks so much!

 

[CassCats]

I would let them have 30 min of natural room light before turning the light on for them, see if they like that.

Some floating plants will also help with that, id recommended anacharis, hornwort, frogbit, or dwarf lettuce

What kind of pellets are you offering?
I do have one skirt tetra who won't take pellets, he prefers flakes but the rest are fine with pellets too. So may take some time for them to figure out theyre food.

 

[mrsjoannh13]

I would let them have 30 min of natural room light before turning the light on for them, see if they like that.

Some floating plants will also help with that, id recommended anacharis, hornwort, frogbit, or dwarf lettuce

What kind of pellets are you offering?
I do have one skirt tetra who won't take pellets, he prefers flakes but the rest are fine with pellets too. So may take some time for them to figure out theyre food.

I actually went back to the pet store to ask what they were feeding so I could get the same thing. So I bought the pellets they had been feeding them thinking they would take to it. They are Probiotix pellets by New Life Spectrum. They seem to just drop to the bottom and pollute the tank. The pellets are small but I still feel like they might be too big for the fish at their current size. I might try to soak the pellets for a minute and crush them into smaller pieces and see if that helps.

 

[CassCats]

Crush them and see. Thats a good brand though.

You could also try Bug Bites as well, really good pellets.

 

[Colin_T]

Check the water quality for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH.

Wipe the inside of the glass down with a clean fish sponge.

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate every day for a week. Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. However, if the filter is less than 6 weeks old, do not clean it. Wash filter materials/ media in a bucket of tank water and re-use them. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the garden/ lawn.

Increase surface turbulence/ aeration when using medications because they reduce the dissolved oxygen in the water.

Try flake food and crumbling it up.

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LIGHTS
Stress from tank lights coming on when the room is dark can be an issue. Fish don't have eyelids and don't tolerate going from complete dark to bright light (or vice versa) instantly.

In the morning open the curtains or turn the room light on at least 30 minutes (or more) before turning the tank light on. This will reduce the stress on the fish and they won't go from a dark tank to a bright tank instantly.

At night turn the room light on and then turn the tank light off. Wait at least 30 minutes (or more) before turning the room light out. This allows the fish to settle down for the night instead of going from a brightly lit tank to complete darkness instantly.