Originally published in Buntbarsche Bulletin # 153 December 1992,
The Journal of the American Cichlid Association.
Published here with the author's permission.
The second most important aspect of pike cichlid maintenance is the inevitable: what to feed? I used to think that the successful pike cichlid breeder would need an unlimited supply of feeder goldfish and/or breeding colony of mice. Perhaps even a steady supply of stray cats. In fact, while adults can be difficult to wean from live foods, juveniles are usually quite compliant and become rather catholic in their epicurean tastes. There are two schools of thought on how to proceed in converting them over to frozen/dry foods. The Let em Eat Cake school says break em immediately. I am not a fan of feeding live fish to other fish. However, if you are dealing with emaciated specimens of a rare species it's not a bad idea to get them back in shape with an initial week or two of feeder fish. The first school suggests that this lapse of good judgement may actually hook the pikes on live fish and ultimately make it more difficult if not impossible to switch them over to frozen/dry foods. They may be right, at least for some fish. My recent experiences with Cr. marmorata which still refuse krill and/or pelletized foods, though will take frozen blood worms (Chironomid fly larvae), prove the point. However, I've had considerably more success with adults of other species (e.g. Cr. cf. saxatilis, Cr. sedentaria, C. cf. johanna) which were initially conditioned on live goldfish.
One aside, concerning the pike cichlid s purported piscivorous nature, seems relevant to this discussion. I've noticed, for a variety of large wild adult individuals of various species, that they don't always know what to do when offered goldfish! Often they seem curious, but tentative. They track the goldfish visually and even follow them around, but their initial lunges are, often enough, well off the mark. They seem to improve their marksmanship with time and experience and eventually get so skilled as to hit multiple goldfish immediately out of the net with little effort. Does this mean that fish are not the major part of their diet in the wild? There is no question that gut analyses of wild pike cichlids suggest that they are, at the very least, occasional piscivorous (Knoppel, 1970). Certainly this is true of the larger species. Are goldfish sufficiently novel in coloration that pike cichlids have trouble recognizing them as food? I doubt it.
My friend, Lee Finley, known for his expertise in catfish, was once an accomplished cichlidophile specializing in rare Tanganyikan cichlids (Sorry to blow your cover, Lee!) When I described this tentative hunting behavior he countered with a similar description of Lamprologus furcifer, a uniquely belligerent piscivore noted for its habit of swimming upside down amongst the rock cave and cracks it frequents and spawns in. Lee recounted his experiences in offering live feeder fish to this cichlid: they dashed out to grab the goldfish but often missed and simply retreated back to the cave rather than follow and chase down the presumptive prey. They were secretive, lunging ambush piscivores. Perhaps, Crenicichla species do not hunt in the wild, rather, dart from their lairs to opportunistically snatch unwary scaled passersby.
Juvenile pike cichlids are much easier to work with. Although they may initially refuse non-live foods, usually, this is temporary. I use dried krill, which floats, as well as Tetra DoroMarin, which sink. John O'Malley has had good luck with frozen prawn. With a little bit of patience and attention to overfeeding (remove the uneaten foods), your pikes will eventually be eating most anything except flake food. Don't even try. You may ultimately return to live feeder fish to condition breeders, but even that is not necessarily so. I know of several spawnings of various pike cichlids species that were achieved without live feeder fish conditioning.
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