[ibefishy]

Does anyone else have an elephant ear that changes shapes. Mine goes from about 7" diameter flat to just a shriveled up little blob on a rock. Then it will do thngs like this. I could fit a baseball inside the first photo. It looks like it ate a baseball in the second. If you have a photo of one of your corals or fish doing something cool lets see it.

Nate

[Ninong]

Nate,

What are you feeding it? You should be feeding it tiny pieces of shrimp or fish meat at least once a week.

Do you have any really small fish in your tank? Especially any small clownfish? If you have any clownfish (unless they're large), you don't want them to accept this thing as a surrogate host. They have been known to kill clownfish. They manage to get the clownfish into one of their mouths and then the next morning you find a dead, slimey looking clownfish floating in the tank.

Did you notice it all balled up like that when you looked at the tank in the morning? Maybe it was "fishing" last night? Maybe it's hungry?

I suggest you start feeding it tiny pieces of fish or shimp at least once a week from now on.

[ibefishy]

Thanks for the info, No I dont have any small fish in my tank. I have only three fish a 6 line wrasse, yellow tang and lawnmower blennie. Where would I get the shrimp to feed it? I heard not to use frozen or fresh shrimp from the grocery store. The pet store here in town doesnt have much in the way of fish supplies. If I were to use fish what would be good to use?

[ibefishy]

Another good lesson for me to learn. I have read in many posts that the people that work in the LFS's dont always know what they are talking about. I have now experienced that being I was told that the elephant ear would filter plankton and such from the water. It has been about 4 weeks that it has been in my tank, probably a little hungry.

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by ibefishy

Where would I get the shrimp to feed it? I heard not to use frozen or fresh shrimp from the grocery store.

Sounds like something an LFS employee would tell you.

You can get the shrimp, or other seafood, at the same place you buy your own seafood to eat, just stick with white fleshed, non-oily fish (meaning no salmon). And stick with saltwater animals only, no freshwater stuff. And stick with raw shrimp, not pre-cooked. It's okay to peel them first but for a large anemone (which you don't have, they should be fed shell and all).

Buy just a few shrimp, two or three (if they give you a dirty look, tell them you're on a new kind of South Beach diet), and maybe something elese. Wal-Mart usually has some gross looking stuff they call "seafood medley," that includes squid, octopus, other stuff (but no shrimp). Just get a very small handful of that to add to your shrimp when you get home.

Chop all of it up into appropriate sized pieces for whatever it is you wish to feed. Add a tablespoon of R.O./D.I. water if necessary to get it to all sort of stick together. Put the rest in a plastic baggie and lay it flat in the freezer so that the "stuff" is no more than about 1/4" thick. Then whenever you need some to feed your whatever, just break off a small piece from the end with a pair of pliers.

When using something like that for carnivorous fish, you will have to make the pieces much, much smaller unless you have really large fish.



P.S. -- LFS employees are the last place to go for information on making your own aquarium food. It's not their job to point you to the nearest supermarket, it's their job to move all that stuff on their shelves.

There are so many great commercial products available now from people like Ocean Nutrition, Cyclop-Eeze, DT's phytoplankton, etc., but they are either frozen or require constant refrigeration, which is why smaller LFS don't bother to carry them.

[ibefishy]

Thanks for the tip. Would small bits of cherrystone clam be ok to feed? I am going to be going to the store later today and I know they have a lot of that stuff.

[Ninong]

Yes, probably, it's sort of trial and error. However, since you're going to the store anyway, be sure to pick up two or three regular raw shrimp because that should definitely work chopped up into tiny pieces.

[weez1959]

Originally Posted by ibefishy

Thanks for the tip. Would small bits of cherrystone clam be ok to feed? I am going to be going to the store later today and I know they have a lot of that stuff.

I feed a silver dollar sized cherrystone clam to the tank once a week and the fish love it!
I usually buy a dozen and freeze them and then when you thaw it there's already a tiny opening to pry it open.
Just thaw, open and rince well, then chuck it in the tank and watch the fish and shrimp go nuts!
You could snip off a piece before feeding the rest to your fish!

[zhenya]

Cool pictures, Nate.

I have now experienced that being I was told that the elephant ear would filter plankton and such from the water. It has been about 4 weeks that it has been in my tank, probably a little hungry.

Some do, meaning they absorb nutrients directly from the water column, but that has nothing to do with the type of mushroom you have. Any so-called "hairy mushroom" can be fed directly like Ninong had said already. I had them before in my tank, not the species you have but nonetheless, and they ate smallish pieces of silversides that I was feeding to my anemone and any other meaty foods offered to the fish.