One of my juvenile EBA is terrible at eating

[MrMuggles]

I got 6 of these electric blue acara about 12 days ago. Most of them have gone through a massive growth spurt in my pristine water, which is great to see. But one is falling behind quickly. I’m primarily feeding the smallest of omega cichlid pellets, plus occasional frozen raw food. but just noticed that this one fish can’t really eat the pellets. I think as a result the fish was underfed for a few days and fell far behind.

now I’m making an effort to get smaller foods down to this specific fish, and its mostly working.

But wow, this fish looks ridiculous at meal time: it swims around spastically between the other fish, mostly watching them eat but rarely taking food for itself. I laughed out loud the first time I saw it, even harder the second time. But it’s not really funny now that it is clearly falling behind.

have you ever had one of a group of juvies that just fell behind and couldn’t compete? Should I try to help more?

 

[TClare]

Yes, one of my festivums is much smaller than the others, they are all very slow eaters, and sometimes just look at the food, they are a bit strange really! But the others at least seem to have grown. The small one seems healthy enough, just way behind in growth.

 

[MrMuggles]

Yeah it’s true that this fish looks healthy enough. Maybe just kind of a goofy runt

 

[jmaldo]

After raising hundreds from spawns, had a few runts and then again had a few peculiar actors. Since you mentioned you thought the food may be to large, try grinding up a few pellets to smaller sizes.

Good Luck!

How about some pics?

 

[MrMuggles]

After raising hundreds from spawns, had a few runts and then again had a few peculiar actors. Since you mentioned you thought the food may be to large, try grinding up a few pellets to smaller sizes.

Good Luck!

How about some pics?

 

[TClare]

I think the small one is fine, looks healthy...