Help with picky barracuda

So I’ve recently received a red tail barracuda for my newly growing at home fish business but he seems not to want eat anything I provide (I’ve been providing exclusively live foods due to their already exclusive picevorous diet) but it seems he won’t go after anything I give rosy minnows won’t bat an eye, ghost shrimp investigates them but won’t touch them, feeder guppies seems to be afraid and actively avoids them, I haven’t tried white clouds which is what I’m thinking might work as my other picky eater my Sumatran leaf fish wouldn’t except anything besides white clouds and shrimp for the first three weeks but he eventually was okay with eating guppies. This is a juvenile barracuda about 3-4 inches and he’s in a temporary 32 gallon tank because I’m selling him to someone else since I’m the only person in my area who can get exotic species readily. But I can’t sell a barracuda that refuses to eat. So I tried using blood worms to see if maybe it would possibly do it but frozen food didn’t work either. So I’m at a current loss right now. Im usually very good with other picky eaters since I raise other species for sale such as Nile puffers, leaf fish, badis fish, knife fish, etc and I’ve had no issue but he won’t attack anything or eat anything. So if anyone has prior experience with freshwater barracudas I’d really like some advice on what to do.

 

A specimen that young would probably be eating ants in the wild. They are the most common insects in SA, and a floating ant would be just about right. You could try wingless fruitflies as a substitute for ants. Very small, floating foods that wiggle or vibrate. Acestrorhynchus tend to be very picky eaters.

 

I’ve got tons of wingless fruit flies that I cultivate for my dart frogs would those work?

 

Can't hurt to try them.

 

at 3-4" it should be eating fish, no longer a fry, and a juvenile at that point, from my experience with yellow tail barracuda( a long time ago to be honest) they are picky. too small a meal and they won't bother, too big and they won't bother either. They can eat a fish up to half it's body size, hey can eat more than one smaller one sometimes too, but they prefer to take the one shot meal over taking 3 cracks to get full. it's best to insert a variety of sizes for him to choose from, from half his body length downward and then remove the rest after he's eaten.. or leave them. and he may get to them. he may wait for them to get distressed and dying if he was fed culls or dead fish only, he may need to chase to eat (it's not really a chase, they hit like a bullet when they are bold). it's hit or miss depending on how he was raised to the point you got him. Mine you could see the bulge of what they ate after, and I got mine around your size and they were near 9" and wanted bigger fish than large feeder comets when I decided I needed to give them up.

Does he look healthy? if they aren't well and not eating they will be skinny with a big head.
picevorous is just what it means, they eat fish, they will cannibalize each other if not given abundant brine shrimp or cyclops as fry. once they have outgrown that, they will want fish that are smaller than them. they might take bugs or worms, crickets and stuff in a pinch, but fish is the diet.

Also it sounds like you just have the one fish, alone they are pretty timid, scared and unsure of most everything, in a group of 4-6, they are bolder and follow the leader on feedings, the first one will take a fish and the others will follow suit in a pack and select targets.

I've had them take fish it took a half hour to get all the way down and have them swimming around with a tail hanging out of their mouth gaping to get it all in there and their mouth closed. it's just about finding what size is good for him that he will take, or the condition the fish needs to be in for him to take it. you could try killing a feeder and dropping it in front of him, or spiking one on a skewer and wagging it near him in the water. But I think just giving him a selection of sizes to choose from, counting them, and turn down the lights so he will feel more secure and then come back later to count them it should work, they will eat bigger fish than you think they would, I think most of it is because he's solo.

 

Well due to availability in my area i bought the last one in stock. He is not malnourished to my knowledge he looks like a regular sized juvenile no large head has average proportions for its species at least. But I’ve tried fish of a lot of variety but he won’t do it I tried guppies, young males, stocky females, fry, rosy red minnows, ghost shrimp, platy fry, I even bought some long tail danios to see if he’d be more enticed by trailing fins. But he won’t budge. I do know that they are usually a shoaling fish but I didn’t have the option of multiple specimens. But he’s still seems active perhaps theirs something I could add environmentally to simulate a more realistic environment? I got my leaf fish to become more active by adding a turtle dock for him to ambush under and barracudas I believe are also surface hunters taking advantage of things closer to the waters surface like a pike or gar perhaps if I added something like duckweed or water lettuce something he can ambush from maybe that’d help? I understand they should be kept in shoals now at least unfortunately the people I bought it from seemed not very well informed on that fact as I was told it was fine to be solo clearly I now know that info is incorrect thanks to you guys. But it still leaves the question of if I can’t add another barracuda for now and he refuses fish what should I do?
Would trying larger insects that maybe have some closer resemblance to fish like maybe use meal worms or crickets something that’s much larger to flies but still is easy enough to eat. I’ve used it with picky arowannas and ctenapomas with success perhaps it would go for it?

 

Well due to availability in my area i bought the last one in stock. He is not malnourished to my knowledge he looks like a regular sized juvenile no large head has average proportions for its species at least. But I’ve tried fish of a lot of variety but he won’t do it I tried guppies, young males, stocky females, fry, rosy red minnows, ghost shrimp, platy fry, I even bought some long tail danios to see if he’d be more enticed by trailing fins. But he won’t budge. I do know that they are usually a shoaling fish but I didn’t have the option of multiple specimens. But he’s still seems active perhaps theirs something I could add environmentally to simulate a more realistic environment? I got my leaf fish to become more active by adding a turtle dock for him to ambush under and barracudas I believe are also surface hunters taking advantage of things closer to the waters surface like a pike or gar perhaps if I added something like duckweed or water lettuce something he can ambush from maybe that’d help? I understand they should be kept in shoals now at least unfortunately the people I bought it from seemed not very well informed on that fact as I was told it was fine to be solo clearly I now know that info is incorrect thanks to you guys. But it still leaves the question of if I can’t add another barracuda for now and he refuses fish what should I do?
Would trying larger insects that maybe have some closer resemblance to fish like maybe use meal worms or crickets something that’s much larger to flies but still is easy enough to eat. I’ve used it with picky arowannas and ctenapomas with success perhaps it would go for it?

if you've tried different sizes, and tried turning the lights down to make him a bit more confident and stealthy and it's not working more cover and shadow likely isn't the solution... I'd say, and I'm sure some people aren't gonna like it, but the next step would be to try an injured fish, and then maybe a dead fish dropped in or on a clamp and wagged near him. that's maybe like an inch long. Mine didn't care about cover, they just basically sat there to the left near the top in a pack and plugged whatever they felt like when they felt like it.

And, if you can, maybe contact the people you got him from and find out what they were doing for feedings, frequency, and if they were doing something different you aren't doing. He had to of been eating something.

Who knows, maybe they were wagging shrimp tails or something and he was eating them and he doesn't recognize fish as food by sight or smell....I still think he should eat when he gets hungry enough, but he might have been raised and taught on pre-killed fish or seafood scrap and has no idea about eating live fish. Actually this is the more likely scenario at this point, Feeders can introduce diseases, theres a lot of benefits to try to break them of live fish and feed cheap frozen market fish slivers or chunks or shrimp parts. he might have been starved until he ate dead fish and shrimp pieces and now won't take fish. if you have some tilapia filet laying around, give a piece a shot on a skewer or on forceps/clamp or just dropping it in.

heck for the matter he might have been weened onto one of those carnivore pellets like a shrimp pellet.

I don't think force feeding is going to work at all, in case you are thinking about it.
I think the best course of action would be to talk to where you got it from and find out what they were doing, it didn't get to near 4 inches, by not eating. if there isn't an answer from them, it would be trial and error, and think outside the box, insects, dead chopped frozen foods. shrimp pellets. there's something he was eating that he's used to for sure, but apparently it's not live fish or live shrimp.

 

Did you get this sorted out and the fish eating?