Ok I missed the F/T thing. This is probably your problem, the instinct just doesn't kick in, they don't even recognize it as food because they have not learned the smell. Some aggressive feeders will take F/T for the first meal but from my experience it's about 1/30 so odds are stacked against you. I never pushed for it, I feed almost exclusively F/T but once I had bad results with my hatchlings, I switched to first meal live and then convert them to F/T. Most of them go to F/T the very next meal but that's because now your odds are greatly increased because they recognize the smell. For that first feeding they need every little detail telling their instincts to strike so that natural movement is near impossible to replicate and very important. All it takes is one feeding and now they know the smell so they are much easier to convince the F/T is food. It really is so easy to convert hatchlings because they are so hungry they are not picky, they are just confused. So that's how I do it anyway, I think it would save you a lot of headaches.Originally Posted by Sunnieskys
I wanted to just touch on the hopper vs fuzzy as well. I had very little success with the fuzzies and a breeder friend of mine told me to go with hoppers instead and his reasoning was, they actually need that jittery fast movement, especially the timid ones because they are not going to actively go find where a fuzzies might be laying. Instead the hopper comes to them at some point and if the hatchling passes on that first go, it isn't long before the hopper is over there irritating them again. This repetitive agitation usually leads to the hatchling getting irritated enough to strike. It makes sense to me and it has proven true for me in a big way. I had 1 out of 10 take the fuzzies and then all remaining 9 took the hoppers, that was one of my first clutches, never tried a fuzzy again, never needed to, I've had extremely good luck getting all my hatchlings to take hoppers, almost all by the second offering.
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