I have 6 dozen RES from last year's spawn that I am pellet training out in my shop. I think that if things continue as they have I will end up with 70-80% of them eating pellets off the surface of the tank in the next month. Right now that is how many I have that are currently eating slow sinking pellets. I do have a handful of RES that never come to the surface but have become great tank cleaners sucking pellets off the bottom of the tank.
The turning point seems to have occurred last week, just by happenstance I went to check on my fish several hours after feeding them and decided to drop a small number (5-10 pellets) in the tank with my 50+ larger RES and they seemed to get mildly competitive with the small amount of food that was introduced. I would wait a minute or two and repeat with another small amout of food. They are extremely competitive with blood worms and nightcrawlers but have not been so with pellets. To me it looked like they were eating the pellets simply to keep the fish next to them from getting the pellet when only a small number of pellets were put in the tank, prior to this it was pretty common to watch them suck in a pellet and take turns spitting it out. I started doing this routine every night and now even one I thought was going to starve himself has started eating pellets.
The funny thing is now when I stand next to the tank most of they come up to the surface and stare at me me expecting to be fed.
There are probably some other factors at play as well.
