Good idea! Take a clove of garlic and cut a small piece off. Put it in a cup with some water (dechlorinated, of course) and soak some food in it for 30 min or so. It doesn't really matter what kind... any will do. Then drain off the water and take out the garlic and feed. Garlic stimulates fishes appetite. It certainly won't hurt to try it.
Oh my God
he finally ate!
Four weeks down the line, and it seems all our efforts have done the trick! Thank you everybody so much for your words of advice. It means so much that finally there's some hope he might come out alright
We thought that it might be a possibility that he had some kind of intestinal parasite/worm, so as a last resort we tried the Flubenol 15 for 'skinny disease' - sent the water cloudy but cleared up after a night - the good thing about it being cloudy is you can see that they're swimming into it and breathing it through their gills. At first there seemed to be little or no change, but after a few days he certainly seemed to have perked up a little and was even showiung interest in food (albeit not eating it). So we returned to this thread and remembered the advice about tempting him with garlic soaked flakes.
To be honest, we really didn't think it would work - I mean, he snubbed bloodworm and everything. But did it like was said, put a small piece of a clove of garlic in some dechlorinated water and added some flake food and let settle for half an hour. We drained it off, threw away the garlic, and put the food in the tank with a net. ...After about 10 seconds of seeing (and I guess SMELLING) the food, he actually went for it!
We've been doing this over the weekend now, just to try and get some food down him, and he's eating a little more each day. Still wont eat normal flake food, but hopefully with his appetite stimulated, he might just start eating normally before long. He certainly seems much happier now, and is swimming around the top half of the tank where he should be. We're so relieved and happy now.
Just keeping our fingers crossed for his progress. A Big, Big Thankyou to Everybody!
