worried about the diet of my Scooter Dragonet

[mvergas]

I have noticed that my scooter dragonet has not been getting larger and as a matter of a fact seems to be loosing some of its muscle mass. After months of watching it pick a bits in my reef and chase down a floating by brine shrimp, i have recently started to directly feed it brine shrip. But i still think that it is not receiving the proper nutrition. i put cyclopeeze in my tank every other day as well. is this enough nutrition for my scooter or do i need to feed something additional?

i have incuded a recent pic for evaluation

[leebca]

Thanks for posting. Also, thanks for thinking about and putting in the photo. Very helpful.

This is a fairly common problem with our marine fishes. I'm not trying to pick on you, personally, but many aquarists think that if the fish goes into an aquarium with live rock that the fish will live because of the foods available from that kind of aquarium.

The problem with this is that the home aquarium doesn't even come close to the wild life normally found in the seas and oceans. The aquarium doesn't have the diversity of natural foods to support the fish, and sometimes doesn't even have the quantity of foods to support the fish. What happens is the fish slowly starves to death.

Yet over and over again the aquarist reads how putting a fish into a tank with live rock and live sand is all the fish requires to live. Not.

It is surprising even how many advanced aquarists have this notion. Maybe for them it's an excuse to not acclimate the wild caught fish to aquarium foods. I don't know. But for me it is totally frustrating watching these fish waste away.

For the novice it can be an excuse to by-pass the quarantine process. During quarantine such fishes need to be trained and taught what and how to eat the foods needed for their health, growth, and well being. But the novice quite often 'panics' or thinks the fish is unhappy, and puts the fish into the display tank without training the fish. The end result is a starving fish.

Now back to your situation. . .
You are absolutely correct in recognizing a nutritional deficiency in this fish. The observation you have made puts you above the average aquarist in caring and concern for your fish. You are to be congratulated for this! The brine shrimp is not nutritious enough even if this fish was eating large quantities of it -- brine shrimp aren't nutritious enough on their own, to support any marine fish's life. The Cyclopeze is a good food, but it should only be a small part of a proper carnivore diet.

If it will eat brine shrimp, feed only gut loaded brine shrimp while trying to get the fish to eat other foods (see following). The shrimp should have been fed fats, vitamins, algae, or some other such foods before they were frozen. Only feed such brine shrimp IF you have to feed this food at all.

The Scooter Blenny (Synchiropus ocellatus) is a strict carnivore. See my post and pay particular attention to the recommendations for Carnivores: Feeding Marine Fish and Fish Nutrition.

What needs to be done immediately is to follow the above recommendations for adding vitamins and fats to all foods provided. Details are found in the above link. Next, the thing needed is for you to find whole carnivore marine foods. These are not things like shrimp tails, fish flesh, or squid. These are things like: plankton, krill, clams, mussels, mysids (not mysis, but mysids -- see the above post for the difference), Cyclopeze, and live newly hatched baby brine shrimp. An immediate exception would be to feed finely chopped fresh scallop meat and then, only twice out of every 21 feedings.

These whole foods need to be chopped very fine to fit the mouth of the Blenny. The foods need to be target fed to the Blenny. The foods have to be rotated so that no one particular food is being routinely fed. And, like mentioned above, soaked in vitamins and fats, alternating.

Most of the tips and things you need to know are found in the above link. Once the whole foods supplemented with vitamins and fats have been fed for a while, then you may begin to balance the diet with 1/3 flesh products and 2/3 whole products. Frozen are the best to any other preserved product.

Good luck!

[mvergas]

wow, fantastic reply! thank you so much for all the great information, i really hope that my scooter will make a turn for the better with these changes. one again, thanks
michael