[thedood]

I lost an espei today. I noticed this morning he looked skinny and wasnt active. I had a feeling he may not make it.

A while back I bought kens tropical flake and since they do not seem to eat like they were before. I think maybe the fish starved. No outward signs of illness on the fish. Just loss of color and went skinny. The rest are active and seem fine but they just do not seem to like this food. I have noticed some times they will grab a piece and spit it out. So my question is what are you feeding your espeis. I am making a run to the pet store tomorrow and want to try something different. If you think I should go ahead and medicate for internal parasites please let me know that as well. Thanks!

 

[WaterLife]

Which flake from Kens did you use exactly? Not all of them are of the same quality ingredient wise.

I've used a couple flake foods from Ken's and my fish (Espei's included) liked them a lot. I've used Premium Color Max Flake and Premium Blackworm Flake (more so for spawn conditioning or just as a treat, wouldn't recommend as staple diet). So many to choose from, with many being nearly identical ingredient formulas, I just narrowed it down to two of them. I do have other non-flake food of Ken's brand though and those are good as well.

I personally like to feed a variety of foods to my fish, but if I had to stick with just one food, it would be New Life Spectrum Thera A (recommend .5mm for Espei, called small community fish formula, but get the Thera A version, regular non-Thera A is still good though) or NLS Finicky Fish formula (only comes in 1mm pellet I believe, which is still edible by espei's. This formula is the best and is even marketed for fish that are picky, though my Espei's are not picky in the slightest and they happily swoop at food).

Fish not eating can be for many stress related reasons (which can be internal parasites, or poor water quality, or afraid/stressed, etc. etc. stress factors).
Rasboras in my experience are not picky at all, and are among the first to dart at the sight of food. So I am leaning towards their being some issue, and not just because they don't like the flake food taste. There is still a slight chance they simply aren't eating the food because it doesn't taste good. You could try looking at the reviews on Kensfish of that particular food and see what people say. If it's has good reviews, and with rasboras not generally being fussy eaters, I would think the food is not the problem and something is causing the fish to not feel well.

Evaluate possible stressors, check for more symptoms exhibited by the fish indicating stress, check water parameters, check for symptoms of internal parasites.

 

[thedood]

@WaterLife Thanks for the advice. I am going to switch some things up which should help them out. The food I am feeding is Kens brand tropical flake. Ken's Premium Tropical Fish Flake