Grooming: Overall understanding of grooming

• There are many ways to groom a fish, but you can’t be unrealistic you can only make a fish pop so much, this is mainly due to there genes (quality genes better results)

1. I would say is best for grooming is food choose foods that help your fishes natural colours:

• Astaxanthin for reds and yellows
• Spirulina for pearls and blue (can be fed to srd with pearl and is in fact really healthy for them)

• Always have a staple pellet, one that is below 40% protein and then have a high protein pellet there are many to choose from (grand sumo, xo humpy head, Cz monster kok, Ocean Free FG-G1 etc) (if your fish is 20cm plus careful on the high protein)

• Increase the water temperature to 28-30C degrees, hotter water promotes there metabolism increases there swimming, but don’t forget hotter water decreases oxygen within the water so increase surface agitation or add a decent air stone.
• Now Some people chose the option to use live food for high protein but be careful as this increases chances it harmful worms, pathogens, etc
• My feeding regime personally for grooming (fish usually be 8-10cm) is feed more frequently throughout the day, staple every day and mix the other pellets up
• Feed 4x, morning, lunch, afternoon, late night, only need to feed a few pellets roughly till they slow eating or seemed less interested in the pellets and every fish is different so can’t tell u how many thats something u have to test (Flowerhorn consume the food less than 5mins)

• Now you’ve increased feeding you need to double your water changes I do 30-40% 2x a week during grooming

• Play with your fish, it’s a big difference when u see a fish been played with be it through mirror techniques or finger chasing, even patting.... u can use another male beside his tank and periodically let them see each other but I have seen this work negatively also so just be wary
• The whole point is to increase his activity his eating more he needs to burn more, get him fit and sexy not fat and sluggish

Signs of stress:

• But remember to look for stress signs, first time u always seem to have a little bit of stress as they get accustomed to the attention, u may need to try few times, if no improvement swap your technique, black bars, shying away in corner, stop eating, skittish.