Leaf fish how to nurish...

[Farid]

Hi there,
as a big surprise i will get up to five leavfish this week...does anyone has kept these beauties??? i need speciali tips about their food...instead to feed masses of guppies i'd like to find out if they eat worms or insects...

here's a link (in german)with photos about them.
http://www.welse.net/homepage/seiten/blattfis.htm

cheers

farid

[Richard B]

This is the south american leaf fish you are talking about.

I have kept these in groups on a couple of occasions in small tanks with little water circulation & artificial plants with large leaves, & fine branched wood/twigs. I have had very little success at all with getting them to eat anything other than small live fish. Their feeding response is triggered by the prey movement so i attempted to feed small earthworms by threading the very tip of a piece of fine fishing line through the end of a worm with a needle & then dangling it for the fish & making it obviously alive by the movement. Hungry fish were just not interested, i only had two instances of worms being eaten when their wriggling sort of went into spasms which the fish found more appealing. i tried the fishing line on a tiny bit of trout and swam it about in a baby fish manner but there was even less success with this

I feel that unless you are ok with the ethics of feeding live fish, this species should best be avoided