fasting jawfish

[Virgil Ann Maderich]

I have a 21gal via aqua tank with a 10gal refugium. The inhabitants are a rainfordi goby, a dragonnet, a jawfish and three seahorses and a cleaner shrimp. Everyone has been happy and healthy for months.

I have always focused on the seahorses for feeding (though they eat like pigs) because of their reputations for being finicky. My yellowheaded jawfish has always been a real glutton. Whenever I would give my sh's live red shrimp he would dash out of his hole and eat before anyone else had a chance. I thought I was being clever and started targeting the sh's by suspending the net with the shrimp over them. I think I traumatized my jawfish, though, because for the last week or so he hardly eats. He used to be so fat I worried he wouldn't fit in his hole. Now he looks thin and is hardly interested in anything. He won't look at the live brine anymore, doesn't dash for the red shrimp at all, has no interest in the frozen mysis. He will nibble some flake (which I used to never feed). He took a couple of blackworms the other day but now won't even look at them. In every other way he seems healthy. I try putting in the food and backing away from the tank. He comes out of his lair but still won't eat much, if at all. If I have traumatized him, is there a way to regain his confidence? Is there some food jawfish just can't resist? He is such a personable little fish, I'd hate to lose him.