Anthias not gaining weight.

[FWC]

So I picked up a dispar anthias a few weeks back. She was pretty skinny when I picked her up, but she was pecking at stuff in the water and she was cheap so I took a chance.

She's still alive and doing fine, however she hasn't really shown any signs of gaining any weight since I got her. I feed a mix of cyclops-eeze and ova about 8-10 times a day which she will eat aggressively, so its not for a lack of feeding.

Any tips ?

[ScubaSteve]

I've been able to get all but 2 anthias eating (and they were in rough shape when I got them) by:

1) Starting them on cyclopeeze

2) Started adding in the occasional live baby brine (if you can gut load them, that'll get the weight on fast)

3) Once they're eating live baby brine, I start to add in frozen brine that I thawed and rinsed. Add the frozen brine into the current so that it moves like it's alive.

4) Start adding mysis shrimp that are roughly the same size or a bit bigger than the frozen brine

5) Once they're eating Mysis you're mostly in the clear. You might be able to coerce the anthias onto pellets if you're lucky.

This really isn't a complicated process and usually takes 1-2 weeks, sometimes faster. The trick is to use cyclopeeze to get them eating, then ween them onto progressively more nutritious foods. Cyclopeeze are small and take a lot of energy (ie. swimming after them) for little return, so you won't see a lot of weight gain. You need to get them into fattier, high protein foods to get them to bulk up.

If that doesn't work to get the weight up, there might be an internal parasite but it's not likely.

[FWC]

Sounds good. I'll dice up some mysis for her tomorrow, I don't have any brine on hand. She likes the bigger chunks that I occasionally get in the ova, so she should take to the mysis I hope :)

[Aquattro]

I have 5 Bartlett's Anthias and they all do well on multiple feedings of pellets. Mysis twice a week, and they stay fat. I guess to fatten them, more mysis should do it.