With lighting for fish IMO and CB1's experience it is best if low lighting is used. Sometimes it is best to not keep the fish in total darkness but in full moon light brightness for the dark period. Very dim light is good esp at first turn on. Then the light can be increased gradually to a brighter dim. Good luck on this project. A lot of the members are interested in your experiences. Please keep us updated. We will learn together.
to clarify... the room is my living room. it has windows with curtains so it is not pitch black.. just no direct light.. and the light trigger is just my dinning room 3x60 watt bulbs... not a spotlight on the tanks or anything...
Originally Posted By: Bill Cody
Some have had success getting hesitant fish to first eat artificial by using current to move the food to simulate it as living.
I believe this to be completely true. These 100 gallon stock tanks are the exact strategy i used on my red ears last year but i also had a dozen 4" black crappie that i was trying to feed train in a separate 55 gallon aquarium... They would not eat anything but blood worms.. not even frozen krill.. or live red wiggler worms... i wasnt feeding them enough blood worms to sustain them (the cost adds up).. Over time some died and in dec i was down to 4 left... at which time i gave up.. i needed tank space to move some sick red ears and bluegill indoors from my outside tank so i moved some of the red ears and a couple of blue gill into the tank.. salted to kill the fungus infection they were developing and decide i would just mix pellets and blood worms and krill until i ran out and if they didnt learn to eat pellets they would just starve..(keep in mind the fish have been malnurished for a year and are no bigger than they were when i bought them last year)
anyway.. long story summary, the crappie have now learned to take krill and even pellets.. Their color is coming back and they are starting to not be paper thin anymore.. I dont consider them completely feed trained yet because they will pas son some pellets and then attack other ones.. i am not sure exactly what they need to see to decide a pellet is or is not food but i hunch it may be the movement caused by the red ear's... i did a short video of todays feeding to show whats going on.. there's two bg, four black crappie and teh rest are red ears.. notice they have no problems eating from the surface.
-edit- also they were really timid becaus eth dog was running around going nuts.. they are usually more happy to see me and more aggressive.
