Enneacanthurus chaetodon

I have recently aquired a few of these and intend to house them in a 30 gal long aquarium basically by themselves, any tips on keeping them happy and healthy would be much appreciated

Mine will eat live food; daphnia, grindal worms and small earthworms. the only frozen foods they will take is bloodworms which they love and occasionally frozen glassworms but they don't like them that much. I have five of them in a 55g heavily planted tank with a sponge filter at one end and a small powerhead 40gph at the other end. I will soon replace the powerhead with another sponge filter. They are awesome little fish. I really enjoy them.

Mine will eat live food; daphnia, grindal worms and small earthworms. the only frozen foods they will take is bloodworms which they love and occasionally frozen glassworms but they don't like them that much. I have five of them in a 55g heavily planted tank with a sponge filter at one end and a small powerhead 40gph at the other end. I will soon replace the powerhead with another sponge filter. They are awesome little fish. I really enjoy them.

Thanks for the info Sam, Now i know who to call if i have problems

I have some very small ones which I love. Their scinetific name is perfect, freshwater butterflyfish would be a much better common name than the boring and lame "black banded".
My problem with the little ones is I can not get them to even taste a bit of frozen food. I am forced to collect water plants from local ponds and wring the scuds and chrinomid larvae from them. Surprisingly, they are growing well on this diet. It sure is a hassel though!

I have some very small ones which I love. Their scinetific name is perfect, freshwater butterflyfish would be a much better common name than the boring and lame "black banded".
My problem with the little ones is I can not get them to even taste a bit of frozen food. I am forced to collect water plants from local ponds and wring the scuds and chrinomid larvae from them. Surprisingly, they are growing well on this diet. It sure is a hassel though!

Oh Noooo... the ones i have are small also, just got them today so i didnt really expect to start eating for a while, what do you do in the winter, kinda hard to gather plants then isnt it, i gotta get ahold of the guy i got these from and find out what they will eat that i can get without a snow suit

Personally, any time I've ever had a "problem" fish, tropical, native, whatever, I've always had 100% success with frozen bloodworms, evev my plecos will eat them. I've also successfully converted my darters to flake after 2 feedings of worms. Granted I haven't tried a whole lot of other foods, but i figure, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

Guess that means I wouldn't qualify for a political career, huh???

Live blackworms are readily accepted by small ones I've had in the past.

I raised about 60 young ones this year and they are hard to get switched over to frozen blood worms at first but most of them do begin accepting them with time. I pretty well sold or traded all but what I plan to keep for keeping my population going and I have those 15 all switched over to blood worms now. I just chop them up with a razor blade so they are in smaller peices and try to feed them frequently, usually twice a day. A heavilly planted tank is definately a bonus with these guys they just seem to do much better under those conditions.

Grindal worms are easy to culture and my Black Bandeds relish them. I think the fish will eventually grow large enough that the grindals will be too tiny though. I also culture earthworms in the same container.

Anyone tried to use freshly hatched brine shrimp for feeding reluctant wild caught Enneacanthus? We did for bluespotted for over 6 months until they started eating pellets. They grew on the brine shrimp quite well. I have even supported bluegill in excess of 6" on the same. If they have the gill rakers for it they can do it.

I'm quite sure mine would eat live baby brine - if I could find some eggs! No shops have them locally for some reason.
It is clearly the movement of live prey that triggers them. They swim right up to the frozen food and stare at it from a fraction of an inch away but never even nibble it.
Any little worm or critter that falls from the weeds is instantly swallowed as soon as it wiggles once.
I'm definately not going to try and keep doing the pond plant thing. I'm gonna have to get some brine eggs and maybe some white worms or similar live food until I can convert them to frozen.
I have tried the chopped blood worms without success so far. I am currently letting them get hungry - haven't added any new plants in several days. Hopefully they will try the frozen when they get hungry enough.
I am also considering adding some rainwater killie fry as dithers. They eat all offered food. I'm hoping the sunnies will see them eat the frozen and be convinced to try it themselves. First I have to convert the killies from full salt to freshwater. If the sunnies don't eat the frozen chopped blood worms today or tomorrow, I'll try the dither idea this weekend. Will report results here.

I'm quite sure mine would eat live baby brine - if I could find some eggs! No shops have them locally for some reason.

I get my brine shrimp eggs / cysts in 16 oz cans at about $35.00 a can plus shipping from Brine Shrimp Direct. That is close to 2/3 pound of edible critter. On can when used to feed 10 or so small fish can last a couple months. It is more expensive than dried feed and frozen feeds but in terms of labor and disease risk control it beats using wild caught forages.

latest update on feeding these critters,.... False alarm i guess, after a couple of days of settling in time, and a discussion with the supplier, they are eating bloodworms both frozen and freeze dried no problem, i still may try to provide some other goodies as time goes on, but for now im just happy they are eating at all, Thanks for the help and suggestions

I'm on the F3 generation from stock I brought back from NANFA 2004 in South Carolina (the Scape Ore Swamp trip.) I've been maintaining them on blackworms, with an occasional feeding of daphnia, and mosquito larvae (in season.)

I typically start the young on newly hatched brine shrimp, which they will take as soon as they are free swimming.

In the past, I've also had some luck getting them to take finely chopped cooked shrimp, which I'm usually either too lazy or too busy to chop up.

Make sure you keep up with water changes. They'll die if you fall behind.

I keep them in rain water from the downspout that drains the roof of my house.

latest update on feeding these critters,.... False alarm i guess, after a couple of days of settling in time, and a discussion with the supplier, they are eating bloodworms both frozen and freeze dried no problem, i still may try to provide some other goodies as time goes on, but for now im just happy they are eating at all, Thanks for the help and suggestions

I'm on the F3 generation from stock I brought back from NANFA 2004 in South Carolina (the Scape Ore Swamp trip.) I've been maintaining them on blackworms, with an occasional feeding of daphnia, and mosquito larvae (in season.)

I typically start the young on newly hatched brine shrimp, which they will take as soon as they are free swimming.

In the past, I've also had some luck getting them to take finely chopped cooked shrimp, which I'm usually either too lazy or too busy to chop up.

Make sure you keep up with water changes. They'll die if you fall behind.

I keep them in rain water from the downspout that drains the roof of my house.

How do you do that water collecting? a rain barrel?? How do you keep an adequate, and affordable supply of blackworms??