How to feed a chinese firebelley frozen bloodworms?

[Neuter]

I have a chinese fire belly from terrible conditions from a supplier. It is healthy now, finally got it eating, I fed it live blackworms every day. The worms make a huge mess in the tank and I HATE having to deal with live food. I want to switch him to frozen bloodworms, does anyone have any ideas? He spends most of his time in my plastic plants, anywhere from the top of the water, to 5 inches down, which has 11 inches of water total. He spends some time on the bottom.

I have a bare bottom tank and those small brown garden lids that people use, I also have a turkey baster and tweezers. He does not seem interested when I hold them in front of him. When I first got him I was able to get him to eat 2 bloodworms, in fact those were the very first thing I got him to eat, but he does not seem willing to eat them again.

Last night I tried dethawing a bunch, put them in a corner of the tank, I don't think he ate any of them but I cannot tell.

Any ideas on what I can do to get him to eat frozen bloodworms would be appreciated.

 

[Azhael]

I´d say it´s a matter of persistence. My c,orientalis pair didn´t take to bloodworms right away but they now eat them like candy.
One trick is to "starve" the newt for a week or so, make it hungry and then offer bloodworms, chances are the hunger will make it interested in the bloodworms. However if your newt has had a rough time because of all the stress, and bad conditions of the importation, it may not be the right time for the starvation trick.

As i said, just keep trying, i´m pretty sure it will eventually notice the bloodworms and chomp on them.

 

[slowfoot]

To switch my larvae from live food to frozen bloodworms, I had to pretend the bloodworms were alive at first. Basically, I just took one, positioned it carefully over the newt, and let it fall in front of the newt's face. This sometimes results in them snapping up the worm as it floats past. Eventually, they started seeking out thawed worms that were on the tank floor.

 

[shop worn angel]

I agree with the above suggestions. I had 4 Chinese Firebelly newt babies morph several months ago. I fed them live worms for a long while and then had to switch to frozen bloodworms when the pet store wouldn't supply me with live food in the hot summer months, because he didn't get any live food in at that time.

To this day,( a year later), I still have one very timid and stubborn little newt that needs a bit of extra encouragement and attention with feeding. I realized that I needed to not worry so much when she first started demonstrating this behaviour...I trusted that when she was hungry, she would eat. I have found that holding the worms with tweezers slightly above and in front of her nose seems to work. She eventually takes a bite. I feed them every second day. It took a while to get her on track with a proper eating schedule, but she has adapted quite nicely.

I wish you luck!:happy:

 

[wargar]

I mixed live and defrosted blood worm and over the course of a month I put in less live and more frozen each time they were fed. Now they are on pure frozen and all eating well.