lima shovelnose feeding?

[juanitoman]

is it hard to get lima shovelnose cats to eat pellets??

[PlecoCrazy]

Yes it can be very frustrating getting them to eat pellets. I suggest doing a forum search as I know its been discussed several times before. Good Luck.

[juanitoman]

THANKS
& WILL DO....

[Viktor Jarikov]

yep IME
I have had 5-7 of them for 2 years. I do not remember them taking any of the 10 various pellet kinds I offered. If they took them, they would spit them out right away and appear to rather be willing to die from hunger than eat anything else but meaty stuff - fish, shrimp, etc.

[Industrial]

Out of all the pimelodes we get in at my LFS, these are the only ones who never ate anything but live fish. Over time they may go for frozen fish/krill, but I could not imagine them eating pellets.

[Redtailrob]

Had my pair about 5 years & both take a manner of pellets especially Sturgeon sinking pellets & Mascivore.
They will take pellet eventually especially if there are other catfish in the tank taking pellet.
Try starving them for a few days at a time so you're confident that they're hungry and they try a SMALL quantity of a few different pellets. All fish can be trained to take dried eventually but it may take a long, long time & patience. (Saying that my old fire eel would disagree with that statement! )

[Viktor Jarikov]

nice to hear from you, Tyler (aka industrial)

well, there you have your small statistical database

Either Tyler and I are right and Rob is just one talented fish manipulator or we are wrong and it is not that difficult for many - so keep us posted Juanitoman, which one is it?

(( a-ah, fire eel... don't even mention - mine two 7" and 13" NEVER ate anything and died in 6 months))

[TP]

I weaned mine onto dried food with Tetra Doromin, which has now changed its name to Tetra Cichlid XL, I'm not sure what it would be called in the States. It floats on the surface for a while and they swim just under the surface until their barbels come into contact with the stick and then they snatch it incredibly quickly. Prior to the Doromin I just fed them frozen bloodworms but never fish as they were pretty small. The conversion happened pretty quickly and now they'll each anything, even the relatively cheap JMC pellets.

[grokefish]

This stuff above^^^^^^
They will soon eat that.

[Viktor Jarikov]

Excellent, excellent news. Thanks so much gents/ladies.

Just to be dead sure: Grokefish, you are talking Tetra Doromin, which has now changed its name to Tetra Cichlid XL, right?

[grokefish]

Yes I am indeed.

[Buddiechrist]

The few I had I started off on flakes but as soon as they were 2 inches they were on the Hikari sinking catfish pellets as soon as they became 6 inches they went straight to the Massivore Delite Sinking pellets it was basically all they ate, they would let floating food site till it would just cloud and break. I ended up trading them for False Jaguars tho.