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I think general consensus with them is that they usually die in captivity specifically because of this problem - they refuse to feed on captive food usually, and seem to only want to feed on fish parasites which are not present in enough quantities in our tanks to sustain them.

If I'm not mistaken, general thought on these fish is that they should be left in the ocean.

Well that doesn't really help my situation, i've already purchased the fish.

If you purchased a cleaner wrasse expecting it to pick up eating, especially right away, you didn't do your homework.

Many do eat in captivity, but just as many, likely much more, eventually perish because they don't eat.

I've gotten a few to eat, and oddly in all cases they started eating NLS Thera-A 1mm pellet food - before frozen (mysis/brine/whatever) or other brands offered.

Good luck.

there are many threads about this topic already so if you do a search, there lots of useful advice of how to get a better chance with this fish. For me, I dipped the food with garlic extract to encourage the fish to eat.

Okay thanks for the advice. I went off some advice from my LPS which has never given me any bad advice. Apparently they didn't do there homework either.

Try some frozen Cyclop-eeze. safari is the only place that I know that sells it locally.. Or better yet, stop by and I will give you a little piece to try. I have some tiny little pellets that mine likes, you can try this too. I also have cleaner wrasse in my frag tank that loves algae sheets..

Hey Shelley! I may take you up on that! He seems to be eating beef heart and ground mysis shrimp, but not very much at a time. So im thinking I may need to get something else going so he doesn't starve or anything.

Reefers rarely have any sucess with cleaner wrasse. You can try a variety of tiny foods but you will be very lucky if it survives.

As posted they are better off let in the ocean to do the good cleaning job they do. IMO they should not be brought in by LFS.

Some loser LFS bring then in to entice newbies to get into the hobby as they are interesting to watch cleaning fish.