Lionfish diet, feeding

[Chela101]

I currently have a small lion fish, in a 35 gal tank for the meantime, till I have my other bigger tank ready and started. With that being said. I did my research on lion fish before. But with mine he doesn’t eat clams or silverfish… he wants to hunt and chase after his food. So rn I am giving him small feeder fish from Petco the ones that cost 22¢ or 29¢. But my question is what can I feed the feeder fish? To get my lion fish his nutrients that he needs…

 

[vaguelyreeflike]

When feeding feeder fish, I highly recommend sticking to live ghost shrimp, guppies and mollies specifically. Stay away from goldfish and minnows, as they are full of thiaminase and aren’t very nutritional as is. Continue offering chunks of frozen as they will eventually convert, mine convert around the 2-4 month range usually. Sometimes it takes not feeding for a few days and then offering frozen, but only do this once he’s nice and chunky.

For diet for the feeders, I recommend frozen foods for them and you can also soak their food in something like Vitachem to enrich them even more. Give them a variety of both algae/vegetable matter as well as invertebrate proteins like brine/mysis shrimp. Emerald Entree would be a good mixed food for your feeders. Feed them right before moving them over as food themselves for best results

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Yeah, you want to be careful with what you feed predators like lionfish - you basically want to feed the feeders (which generally should be mollies, guppies, and ghost/grass shrimp) the highest quality feeds you can get; my suggestions below (the frozen foods are higher quality, but can be too costly for people):

Personally, my suggested feeds would be as follows (I apologize, I haven't looked into frozen algae-heavy feeds enough to have one that I would suggest at this point; I'll have to remedy that):
Frozen (Meaty) - LRS Reef Frenzy, Hikari Mega Marine, then Rod's Original.

Pellets (Meaty) - Otohime, then TDO Chromaboost.
Pellets (Algal) - NLS Marine Fish Pellets (has 8 types of algae and one terrestrial plant).

Another method for getting them to prepared feed rather than live feed:

Converting piscivores to feed on non-living foods​

One basic principle of life in the sea is that big fish often eat little fish. Many carnivorous fish feed exclusively on smaller fish and are termed obligate piscivores. When brought into captivity, this feeding behavior can become a liability, as small, living marine fish are too expensive to feed to larger fish on a regular basis. When one of these fish is collected and brought into captivity, it may not have fed normally for up to a month prior to that time. The first consideration is of course to get the animal feeding as usual. This often entails offering the piscivore some small live fish, which are usually accepted with much gusto. Lionfish, anglerfish, trumpetfish and many others will accept live fish quite readily from the first day they are placed into an aquarium. The question is then; can this feeding regimen be sustained? For aquarists near the ocean, this may not be a problem as they can usually collect some manner of small live fish to feed their animals. Inland aquarists have more of a problem. Buying damselfish, marine killifish or other species becomes too expensive. Mollies and Gambusia can be adapted to living in seawater and then be used as a live food source. Live feeder goldfish and guppies may be accepted, but have serious nutritional deficiencies when fed to marine fish for long periods (See thiaminase section above). If nothing else, using live fish as food is abhorrent to some aquarists, and is never really a convenient or cost-effective food source. The alternative then is to train the piscivorous fish to accept some type of non-living food. The following process has worked for every species of obligate piscivore, as long as the aquarist spends the time and effort required to allow the method to succeed:


1) The first step is to stabilize the new fish and get it to accept any live fish of appropriate size as a first meal (At the same time, general quarantine issues must be addressed). Do not allow the new fish to spend too much time at this stage. It is very common to have fish become “addicted” to one particular type of live food if it is used for too long of a time. As soon as the fish is routinely accepting live fish, and has become somewhat conditioned to associate your approach with an impending meal, it is time to try step two.

2) Using the same species of food fish that the animal is accustomed to, freeze some, then offer the animal a mixture of living, and thawed / dead fish. By chance, it will likely swallow some of the dead fish while searching out the live fish. If this fails, try impaling a live fish on a broom straw or 3/16” clear tubing and offer it to the fish that way. Once accepted, switch to impaling previously frozen fish and feed in the same manner.

3) Continue introducing more thawed whole fish to the animal’s diet each day until the animal is not being offered any live or fresh food. It may help to forcefully toss the dead fish into the aquarium so that their motion is more likely to elicit a feeding response.

4) Eventually, the predator should be feeding solely on thawed, whole fish tossed into the aquarium. At this point, use a knife and remove the head of each of the frozen fish, so that the predator then becomes accustomed to feeding on just the fish’s body. The reason for taking this step is that most piscivores clue in on their prey’s eyes as a means to make an effective capture. When the eyes of their food item are removed, this primary feeding cue is removed and they may not recognize the item as food. Once the piscivore has overcome this need, they are one step closer to being trained to feed on prepared food items.

5) The next step to take is to switch the fish to begin feeding on a different type of fish flesh such as smelt. To make this transition, use a sharp knife to cut a piece of smelt into a good facsimile of the headless fish that the animal has been used to feeding on. Drop these smelt pieces into the aquarium and they will usually be accepted with little problem.

6) At this stage, the predatory fish is usually willing to begin accepting almost any food item including prepared gelatin foods. Never allow the fish to “backslide”, avoid the temptation to give it a live fish as a treat from time to time. The fish may relapse; and you may find that you will have to start the training process all over again.

For what to feed with prepared feeds (you want to be careful/purposeful with what you feed predators to avoid long-term health issues):

Here's 3 of my most comprehensive threads on feeding lionfish and other predators.

Lion King's dead food recommendations

I'm a health nut if you haven't noticed, this also translates to my pets. Today I will cover some of the dead foods I feed and why, with some nutritional info that I recall off the top of my head. This is by no means all the foods you can feed, these are just the ones I include in my feedings...

www.reef2reef.com

The truth about FATS

I remember one the first things I learned about fish when I started this hobby; was the differences in carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores. Lions, eels, anglers, etc. are carnivores, among many other species. Carnivores need a dominant protein and fat diet with minimal carbs. Frankly I'm a bit...

www.reef2reef.com

You want to be careful feeding krill, silversides, and even shrimp - the reason is the Thiaminase, which breaks down Vitamin B1; by all accounts that I've heard, if predators develop a vitamin B1 deficiency, they will die from it.

Fresh/live shrimp is fine, but shrimp that has been frozen/stored for a long time will have some of the vitamin B1 it contains breakdown while the thiaminase stays in tact - this can lead to it adding to the thiaminase in a predator's diet with little vitamin B1 to counteract it.

Some kinds of silversides are fine, but a lot of silversides are high in thiaminase (there are a ton of different species known as silversides) - the last I've heard, San Francisco Bay Brand (January of this year) was the one with good silversides to use.

Krill is high in thiaminase, and should largely be avoided with predators.

If you have questions on the thiaminase content of a species of fish you may want to feed to your lions, see the link below:

Alternative foods for predatory fish

Hello I have some predatory fish (miniatus grouper, clown grouper, tesalata eel, small red tooth trigger) I am currently feed them whole fish sold at my local fish shop but its becoming quite pricey what other alternatives could I fees them from a supermarket?

www.reef2reef.com

That said, salmon is pretty much the gold standard; mackerel is a decent second place to my understanding.

Why a "dead only" diet is a death sentence

I have always been a advocate for feeding live foods to certain species, I have seen the increase of captive lifespan and vibrancy of these species by doing so. After contemplating on the shear failure of 999% of those that are determined to feed a dead only diet, I will no longer support this...

www.reef2reef.com