The Puffer Forum

Hello everyone! I have a question that I am hoping someone with more experience can help me with. I have had my DP's for about six months now. The only thing I have ever been able to get them to eat is live food (mostly black worms, snails, and brine shrimp). Is it common that they will only eat live food? I really want to get them to eat frozen food so their diet is varied and I don't always have to keep the live food on hand. I have tried frozen blood worms and mysis shrimp. They will swim up, follow it around for a while, take a bite and spit it out, and then ignore anymore I put in the tank. Is there a trick to getting them to take it? If they get hungry enough will they eventually eat it, or will they just starve themselves? Any tips would be appreciated.

Huh. It's interesting that they recognize it as food, but reject it anyway. Mine used to eat frozen, went on mostly live for a while, and now they hate frozen, but they eat it if they have to.

I suggest soaking the food in garlic juice.

at first, i had a tough time getting my DPs to eat frozen bloodworms too
you might try giving them live food in the morning, in limited amounts, so that when you feed them in the evening, they will be hungry
in the evening, give them a limited amount of defrosted & RINSED bloodworms (garlic Juice, as LilGreenPuffer mentioned, can be very helpful)
i use a medicine dropper to feed them, because it helps to make sure all of the fish get some food, & that are NO uneaten leftovers
it takes some persistence, but it can be done
be sure to avoid feeding too much, so that they will be eager to eat when you feed them
keeping them a little on the hungry side is good!
my DPs are now as enthusiatic about the bloodworms as the live blackworms!

mine are actually doing to exact same thing, they will eat the food but just spit it back out. ive tried soaking the food in garlic juice and it doesnt seem to make them want it anymore but it does leave a nasty looking film on the surface of my water