Thread: Help please, sterlet not eating.

Hi/ Have you tried the Sturgeon web Page?

Thanks for the replies. Just in case it helps anyone in future, this is what helped. We removed the sturgeon into a (QT) paddling pool to separate them from the koi, and to stop the koi eating their food.

We mashed up their normal food by softening it in a tiny bit of pond water and then mixed it with some defrosted bloodworms. Rolled this into marble sized balls, and placed 2 of them into the pond for them to eat.

This worked really well, but it is pretty messy, so it needs suctioning out once they're finished eating. We gave them 20 mins and then removed the rest.
On the advice we were given by someone who raises sturgeon, we did this for a week, and have slowly reintroduced the pellets as well.

We had 2mm pellet as required for sterlets upto about 12", although we've since been told to keep them on this size until around 24", as their mouths are small, and can only fit in pellets which are ½ the width of their mouth. Our 2 are approx 12" long and whilst 1 was managing well on the 2mm pellets, the other wasn't able to eat them.
We've since bought NTLabs medikoi sturgeon junior pellets, which are much smaller than the ones we have, and he manages to eat them okay.

We had tried some other small sturgeon pellets, but noticed that the top ingredient was soya, which isn't good for them. It needs to be animal/fish protein, really. Just thought I'd mention this as something to check if your sturgeon arent growing or eating well, as it wasn't cheap, and it said it was suitable for sturgeons, although sturgeon need a minimum of 42% (animal/fish) protein, and on checking, this only had 38%.

For the few day we fed it, whilst we were waiting on the other sturgeon food order, we noticed that it created a lot more waste, probably due to the fact sturgeon can't really digest plant matter, so it was just going straight through them. Also, means that it isn't good value.

They seem to like the new food though, and much less waste. He's already put noticeable weight back on, so it's working and we're back to just feeding normal pellets again.

We also fed lots of small meals, mostly during either the early morning/dawn and dusk/evening, as we were told they prefer to hunt/eat under the cover of darkness. We only feed again if the old food is gone/was eaten at the last mealtime.

We did also give a little around lunchtime, too.

We tend to give just a pinch of food at a time and if they finish it within a couple of minutes we give another pinch, but if not we leave it 20 mins, and then clean any leftovers out.

We don't clean up after them once it's dark as we don't want to disturb them too much and we'd have to put lights on to clean them out, so that gets left til 1st thing in the morning.
We only get a little waste now, if any, as we seem to have got the amounts about right now, which helps.