Cael Gallery
Active Member
I have a 11-12cm spanish hogfish. I got it about a week ago and has been living in my 1.5 week old red sea g2 750 for that length of time. It is a very friendly and outgoing fish and will swim up to the front glass everytime i walk past. If i stick my hand in the water, i can almost touch it, it's very calm. I can also feed it by hand or with metal forcpes or a pipette. The weird thing is, this fish refuses to eat food from the water column.
It will eat small amounts of mysis only if i am standing there, offering it individual pieces by hand/tweezer, or with the mysis sticking tail-out from the 'mouth' of a pipette. If i release the mysis into the water column it completely ignores it, likewise for food at the bottom. All day long it's swimming around my live rocks picking at them.
There have been a few hitchikers on the rock that i have given to the hog which it has gladly eaten including a small red crab that was initally put in my sump, but had a bad moult and died. This along with a saltwater feeder shrimp were gladly snapped up. I'm just very confused as to why it can't recognise stuff in the water column as food. I even tried putting a half shell clam in there, it swam over and tore the meat off the shell and as soon as the meat started floating away in the current, it lost interest.
Aside from this behaviour the fish and the others in the tank are super healthy and seem fine.
Is my fish just a big baby who wants me to hand feed it every time? Should i stop encouraging this and just feed normally and hope it stops this behaviour?
Any advice is appreciated
It will eat small amounts of mysis only if i am standing there, offering it individual pieces by hand/tweezer, or with the mysis sticking tail-out from the 'mouth' of a pipette. If i release the mysis into the water column it completely ignores it, likewise for food at the bottom. All day long it's swimming around my live rocks picking at them.
There have been a few hitchikers on the rock that i have given to the hog which it has gladly eaten including a small red crab that was initally put in my sump, but had a bad moult and died. This along with a saltwater feeder shrimp were gladly snapped up. I'm just very confused as to why it can't recognise stuff in the water column as food. I even tried putting a half shell clam in there, it swam over and tore the meat off the shell and as soon as the meat started floating away in the current, it lost interest.
Aside from this behaviour the fish and the others in the tank are super healthy and seem fine.
Is my fish just a big baby who wants me to hand feed it every time? Should i stop encouraging this and just feed normally and hope it stops this behaviour?
Any advice is appreciated
