What live food can I feed Rummy Noses?

JordynMurdock

I'm looking for a good live food to feed my Rummy Nose Tetras. It seems like they are no longer taking my flake food so I want to try live food.

Could I get some suggestions on what kind of live food to feed them and where I can get some...

CAangels16

They should eat live blood worms or live brine shrimp. If you have a local fish store around you they might have some.

Also, instead of getting live food for them which can be a little impracticle, try using frozen food.

Byron

I agree on the suggested live and frozen foods. But I would stay with prepared foods as the basic, and use the live/frozen as treats once or twice a week.

Rummynost are wild caught, but they readily will eat prepared foods. One should always use a variety of foods, 3 or 4 alternated, as some fish do sometimes have preferences. And it may seem that they spit them out, but that is sometimes their method of eating.

Of course, something might be wrong, and they might not eat due to a health issue or water conditions. They will not do well in hard water for istance, and they have a low tolerance for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and fluctuating water conditions.

Byron.

JordynMurdock

I try to give them a variety but it doesn't work. My Rummy's will NOT under any circumstances go to the surface for food. They wait for flakes to sink and then go for them. So when I bought blood worms, I found out that they float and pretty much never sink. I had some floating for hours before removing them. This basically made it pointless to feed them the blood worms. They will sometimes eat the leftovers from the pellets that I give my Corys. Any other suggestions for foods to give them?

Byron

My rummys also eat from lower down. They wait for the sinking foods that I feed for the corys and whiptails to come down. Two methods work for this. Feed some of the small and mini pellet foods that will begin to sink almost immediately. Second, with flake foods, put in say half a teaspoon as close to the filter return as you can, and stir them in immediately. The current will carry them down into the water column.

On the bloodworms, do you mean the frozen, or the freeze-dried? If the latter, soak them in a small dish of tank water first so they expand and they will sink a bit. If it is frozen, they should always be thawed before feeding. A small dish of warm water to thaw them completely, then add the bloodworms to the tank. They will likely still float a bit; I use a pipette to squirt them (thawed) down into the tank for bottom fish. Bloodworms should not be a steady diet though, only once or twic e a week. They have too much fat and protein (think its protein...something anyway).