One of the coolest things about cold-extruded pellets from New Era Aquaculture is that they are soft enough to be pressed into larger chunks and even shapes. We’ve been pressing the pellets together into larger chunks to feed big mouthed predators like hamlets, eels and wrasses for some time now, and thought we’d share with you how easy it is to handfeed larger slow-moving predators in a rambunctious community fish tank.
With lots of aggressive feeders and faster moving fish like angelfish and wrasses, it is sometime hard to make sure that some of the food gets to the white-eye moray eel in a community tank. In order to ensure that the eel gets enough food, either a lot of food has to be added to make sure some makes it towards his den, or the eel can be target fed with large pieces of food.
Traditionally, to feed a reclusive predator like an eel large chunks of frozen food like silversides, krill or squid, would be offered on a stick or with tongs Frozen food has the inconvenience of needing to be kept frozen, thawed and then even rinsed off of excess meal juices that collapse protein skimmer foam.
Cold-extruded pellets are soft and sticky enough that they can easily be pressed into larger predator-size chunks.
Once the cold-extruded pellets have been pressed into a familiar shape, use tongs or long tweezers to get the food to your target, for the faster moving hamlet we just simply drop the new chunk into the tank. For feeding the eel tongs are used and the rest is second nature.
