longnose butterfly not eating...please help!

[seanoman]

Hey!

We picked up a small longnose butterfly on Monday from J&L and we still have not been able to convince it to eat. We have tried Formula Two flake food and also we've been feeding frozen mysis shrimp. Does anyone else have any suggestions as to what else we can try to get this little guy to eat?

[Interior_Reef]

Garlic,

also, if you have any seaweed, keep a bit always in the tank, so they can graze on it when they like.

[seanoman]

we have seaweed in the tank already for our regal tang so that shouldn't be an issue. I guess we can try the garlic. Do they get stressed out easily? It just seems to stay in one corner of the tank at the front of the glass and swim up and down. No one seems to bother it but it's acting strange.

[michika]

What else do you have available to you for foods? Brine shrimp, while not particularly nutritious seems to help get some fish eating. You can also try open clams on a half shell, so I hear. I would be wary of the clams though, just in case you have any of your own ornamentals.

[seanoman]

we don't currently have any brine shrimp at home, but I was thinking that I would go and get some tomorrow. Maybe that will work....hopefully. We don't have any clams in the tank currently but more than likely will get some in the future. I guess we'll wait and see. We've never had a fish that didn't want to eat before so we're both kinda puzzled.

[Renegade]

i got one not too long ago from J&L's and i started him on arcti Pods (dead ones stored in fridge) also purchased from there. Now he eats everything i put in there.

Kyle

[seanoman]

So things are looking much better I think. We got home today and tried the cyclopeeze...didn't do the trick. A little while later I threw in a cube of frozen mysis that I soaked in cyclopeeze...still not working. We went out and bought some clams as Delphinius suggested, and threw one in. It didn't seem interested at first so we left it alone and checked back about an hour later. The clam was moved around and was partially eaten. We're not sure if that was our regal or the butterfly but it was behaving differently and was checking out the rest of the tank for the first time, instead of staying in the one corner. We went out for the evening and when we came back, our whole sheet of nori was gone also...I know our regal is a little piggy but I don't think that it would have eaten an entire sheet of nori to itself! I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that it's been eating.