I still remember the day almost 2 years ago, when a friend of mine said he would be able to send me a West African Lungfish, i was as excited as a child before his birthday.
i woke up early in the morning and left home with a friend to pick up the parcel.
it was a huge styrofoam box, quickly brought it home and unwrapped the box, to find this huge fish calmly resting in a polythene bag and water.
quickly acclimatized it and let it go in the 120 gallon tank, that was waiting for this fella.
and then began the trouble and woes, as the fish wouldn't eat anything at all, i tried frozen artemia, market prawn, pellets, nothing worked, and this was just for the first 2 weeks.
when i got the fish it was a quite a fat one.
and as i had failed with processed foods and frozen foods, i tried ghost shrimp, and that added to the existing troubles as the lung fish being partially blind couldn't hunt the ghost shrimp and the shrimp being quite voracious predators, started eating the slime as well as a layer of the lungfish's fins, and now it had been more than 6 weeks and the lung had continued its hunger strike.
after putting a lot of thought, i got earthworms as a last resort, i got those big earthworms, which are 14-15" long and then i started trying everyday trying to hang them in front of the fish's mouth, after 3 unsuccesful attempts, on the fourth day the fish accepted the earthworms and ate almost 9 of them, and after this the fish recognised me as a source of food and did not hide from, but always would come forward and beg for food, even today the fish is a very tame one and always comes to the front of the tank to beg for food.
i feed it a very varied diet, which includes
- meal worms and super worms - which are gut fed on potatoes and carrots
- hikari cichlid gold floating
- hikari cichlid excel floating
- algae wafers
- hikari massivore
this fish prefers cooler tropical waters, likes less flow in the tank, would love a driftwood as it can swim around it, the substrate is river sand
