Other Fish Photos

[copperarabian]

Originally Posted by Sakura8

All the pics I've seen of ABFs were of ones that were just plain brown. He has gorgeous markings on his back.

Mine was just shades of brown when I first got him, a week after he jumped out his colors got really beautiful for some reason(that's why I took the pic) and stayed that way. He was metallic gold with a bit of red in his fins and really dark to light shades of brown plus a little olive brown. So pretty :) He also let me hand feed him and whenever he saw he he would swim over to see if I had food lol.

[Sakura8]

Do they have to eat live crickets or will they adapt to any floating food?

[copperarabian]

Originally Posted by Sakura8

Do they have to eat live crickets or will they adapt to any floating food?

You have to feed them live crickets at first, then you want to get him to take the crickets out of your hand. Once they're being hand fed transfer to freeze dried foods but still include some crickets, hand-feed both so other fish don't get them.

Once I had mine eating freeze dried it was easy to get him on flakes, I would put a little freeze foods on the surface with some flakes and once he realized it was food he was a great eater. I still bought him a cricket once in a while and would he got any both I found in the house.

[Sakura8]

That's good to know. For a while I was thinking of getting one but I wasn't sure about the food requirements. Thanks. :)

[copperarabian]

If they're from a really good fish store they may even already be eating flakes :)

[Sakura8]

Ooh, even better.

[FishyFishy89]

How do you hand feed them? Dangle the food in the air?

[copperarabian]

Originally Posted by FishyFishy89

How do you hand feed them? Dangle the food in the air?

I dip it in the water a little, they have a blind spot straight foreword so it's good to hold the food off to a angle. Sometimes I would wiggle the food on the surface to get them interested but once they know your fingers mean food they are super eager, they'll even bite your hand once when you don't have food lol

They're incredibly fast when they lunge for food, the only hard part is holding the food loose enough that they can snatch it out of your hand without missing.

[FishyFishy89]

Originally Posted by copperarabian

I dip it in the water a little, they have a blind spot straight foreword so it's good to hold the food off to a angle. Sometimes I would wiggle the food on the surface to get them interested but once they know your fingers mean food they are super eager, they'll even bite your hand once when you don't have food lol

They're incredibly fast when they lunge for food, the only hard part is holding the food loose enough that they can snatch it out of your hand without missing.

lol
reminds me when we went to the keys/fed the Tarpons

[copperarabian]

Wow! I bet that was scary the first couple times lol

Here's a video that shows how quick the African butterfly is taken by someone on youtube. When mine saw me feeding my fish in mu 16/17g he would sometimes take one big jump across the tank lol