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I bought an Ageneiosus Marmoratus four days ago. Since homing it in a 125 gallon (72 in long) tank I've had a difficult time observing eat. I typically feed the fish about 30 minutes to an hour after the lights go off. I have tried frozen foods like silversides, brine shrimp, blood worms, mussels, squid and krill. There are also various dry foods that I feed the tank dry foods for the rest of the fish inhabiting it.

I've heard it can take some time to get them to take to any foods besides live foods, I'm not to worried yet but am looking for advice if it ends up going weeks without any sort of want to eat.

Hi Domaku,

I've never kept , so I don't speak from experience with that species. But I do have a couple of questions:

1. Is there a reason why you are not starting with live foods and training the fish over from live to prepared? (as opposed to going straight at prepared foods)
2. Instead of feeding right after lights out, what about trying the feeding just before lights on? (e.g., 5am or whenever, about 30 minutes before other people start waking up in the house and getting active/loud and turning on lights?)

Good luck, Eric

Thanks Eric,

I did not start with live essentially because the local fish store I bought him at did not have and in stock at the time. I tried some ghost shrimp this evening. I just hope it can catch some as the supply I got today was only around 10.

The advice on feeding early is definitely one I will try, I wake up pre dawn as it is so this shouldn't mean any change for me.

Thanks again, Daniel

They can be exceedingly stubborn. I've given this fish one try. It was a sizeable specimen, 8"-10", in a 1500 gal pond with a hundred other tank mates. I've been offering it 20 different kinds of prepared feeds for several months - frozen, dry, freeze dried. Tried live crickets too. It wouldn't show any interest. Eventually got very thin and perished. Now it could have also happened as a result of some latent illness. That I can't know.

So, luckily I got it to eat something. It's significantly more plump than it was the evening I posted this. I fed early in the morning when I woke up and didn't stick around to see what it ate but it has taken to something I barraged it with. So far I've not noticed any missing fish. Though I was unable to account for all of my corydoras because of the lighting this evening.

One thing I was worried about was that it may have eaten a small( 2.5 inch) Ageneiousus Vittatus I have in there with it. The Marmoratus is around 4.5 inches. I've read stories of them eating fish up to 3/4 of it's size.

It would be a very unlucky coincidence thatthe day you sart feeding at the end of the night instead of the beginning, your fish finds out there are interesting fishes around

Still, such things do happen

That's a good point, one part I had forgotten to mention was that there was a crayfish I purchased for food a few weeks ago. My Gudgeons has been unsuccessful at catching it. The silhouette from the catfishes stomach looks very close to that of a catfishes body.

Looks like it may have been a fish after all. One of my Rosy Barbs.

They like to swim against water current - like the powerhead.
Try to drop the market prawn in front of them. I did that with my pair.

I wouldn't risk it in with Corydoras as it may end up getting one stuck in it's throat and either starving or causing internal damage. And i woul;dn't risk it with anything small enough for it to eat, such as the Rosy barb it has already taken. Over time the number of fish will dwindle, and you will struggle to get it off live food until there's nothing left to predate on. And I'd be really wary about leaving it with the A.vittatus (if it really is one, as I've never seen one advertised for sale that was identified correctly) if it's smaller.
Martin