Lawnmower Blennie

[gboots]

Good evening all,

My lawmower has been slowly loosing weight and is looking too skinny. He is always picking at the glass and live rock, but won't eat anything i feed the other fish. Brine shrimp, Formula 2, nori. I recently bought some garlic extreme to try to lure him to the food but nothing.

Please help I don't want him to die :(

[Troy F]

Hi Glen, I'm afraid there is not much good news. Usually these fish either do or don't when it comes to prepared foods. With Salarias fasciatus it is really important that they are excepting prepared foods before you bring them home. Once feeding they are a hardy fish. Unfortunately, some are strict herbivores for reasons unexplained.

You could try gut-loading some live brine shrimp with selcon. If this doesn't work then it may be best to find someone with a fairly large tank and filamentous algae or diatoms.

One other thing, try to avoid scraping the glass. How big is your tank by the way?

[Reef_Ready]

You could try gut-loading some live brine shrimp with selcon. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Can you elaborate on this for me Troy?

[Troy F]

Ray, just put some selcon in the water with your brine shrimp. They will feed on it, then strain and feed them to your tank. HTH

[Reef_Ready]

Thanks Troy

[gboots]

Thanks for the advice troy. I have a 33g tank. I've only been scraping the front of the tank and leaving the sides and back.

If there is anybody on the island that has a bigger tank with abudant filametous algae I would like to put him up for adoption in the next week or so. :(

[Aquattro]

Glen, check with Bruce..he has "a bit" of algae he needs eaten.

[Reefmaster]

if nothing else comes up glen we can put him in our refug (45g) till he fattens up a bit. LOTS for him to eat there!
i'm not sure our main tank has enough of what he likes to put him in there though, but could try that.
shane

[gboots]

Thanks for the offers,

I'll let you know in a week or so. I'm not giving up on him quite yet. He appears to be eating more, I just hope he will gain some weight.

Thanks again. smile.gif

[Sushiman]

Mine has taken well to plain Nori from the supermarket. He was my first fish and besides what he grazes I've fed him nothing else. he's nice & fat & very active. My tank has very little nusiance algae now so I've upped the frequency of Nori feeds. I double it now as a feed for my Tuxedo urchin. it did take awhile for the Lawnmower to clue into Nori, now he shows up when I set up the urchin salad bar & digs right in. ***remember; saltwater fishes consume the water around them so Selcon can get into their system passivly as well as activly. Keep at it, offer lots of variety & don't give up.
-Sushi. tongue.gif