How do you get a lionfish to eat frozen food?

[ReefOcean]

Originally Posted by Gripenfelter

He hides behind rocks until about midnight and comes out. Seen him twice this week. I drop silversides and inject mysis shrimp behind the rocks.

No clue if he is eating or not. Been 4 weeks since I visually saw him eating at the pet store.

Id say ignore the mysis. I found no luck in just dropping silversides or krill into the tank. Once it hits the sand, my fish/eels would not touch it.

If it is hiding behind rocks, that might be a new issue all together, out of alll the lionfish I have seen, and the 3 I have owned all of them have pretty much stay perched in the open. When a fish hides in the rocks, it is usually a sign that it is stressed.

You need to get the fish in the open and intice it to eat.

A more drastic approach would be to isolate it, and force feed it until it is weened. i have never had to do this myself, but i have heard people doing it with varying success. The key is to make the fish ciomfortable, and remove distractions and stress.

[ScubaSteve]

It's been mentioned before but I'll stress it: You need to know what the fish's eating pattern is. Volitans are stalkers/hunters and will typically, until acclimated to other food, not touch anything that is obviously dead. If they see the food fall to the bottom they consider it dead and leave it alone. Try to make a silverside dance in the rocks near where he hangs out and see if that will entice him out. I am assuming he's a wild caught fish, so he's still going to have the wild feeding response until you teach him otherwise.

As reefwars said, if he's hiding and not picking off your smaller fish, then he's probably stressed out. Have you seen anyone picking on him?

[Gripenfelter]

A couple of weeks ago I saw a cleaner shrimp clean his mouth and a small chromis hover above his head...nothing lol.