Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi- I have two female matas, both with about an 8" carapice. This past weekend I bought them some fathead minnows. They have been eating these or rosys exclusively for the 3 years I have had them both. For some reason- since their last feeding (a week previous) they seem unable to swallow. They kill the fatheads and really work to swallow them. They eventually get frustrated, spit out the minnows, and go kill more...only to spit these out too. There is no substrate or chance of them ingesting rocks, the water is as clean as can be, etc.....any thought why they stopped? Could it parasites? I am stumped. I tried feeding them some smaller rosys, but they spit these out too.

I had a mata show a similar feeding problem to the one you described. The problem disappeared immediately after I made some changes to the tank setup. Because I changed multiple things, I don't know the actual culprit, but there seems to be two likely ones:

1) The amount of peat in the tank was actually too high, such that the mata may have been swallowing some with the fish if it took one from near the bottom (which tasted horrific I'm sure).

2) The sphagnum moss I was using to milk tannins at the time had gotten rather old, leading to some extra algal growth (which, again, the mata may have swallowed with the fish).

The changes I made that seem to have fixed the problem: More filtration, leaf tannins only (added using nylon leaf bags) so there is no moss in the tank, less free peat (and more in bags).

If you have any more information about your setup, I might be able to give more thoughts.

--'Rhemil'