Feeding slow eaters with agressive eaters?

[Sky042]

I've got 4 pictus catfish in my 125 along with some clown loaches.

The clowns aren't the most agressive eaters and the pictus will inhale food till their little belly's look like they're going to explode like a bomb.

How can I make sure there is enough food put down for the Cloan loaches when the pictus cats just eat everything in sight and will overeat to the point it takes 2-3 days for their belly's to return to normal?

I've tried putting out veggies but the clown loaches didn't seem that into them (cuccumber and zucchini) though my pleco seemed to love it.

 

[Jules H-T]

I've always found that when a Clown Loach is hungry, it can hoover up food at an amazing rate, using it's little mouth tentacle things to grab loads. I've also found they seem to like having a munch on algae tablets too. What else are you feeding? Mine love bloodworm, to the extent I've had to thaw it in a pot with a bit of tank water so it spreads out when I add it, so the others could get some. Large live bloodworm goes down a TREAT! Daphnia & brine shrimp they totally ignore, presumably because they are so small. They also tend to avoid flake food unless I put it in before anything else.

Are you sure they aren't just not very hungry? Any of this actually help?!

 

[inflexion]

i found some jellied tetra bloodworms and they work a treat with my frogs.

the fish are too busy eating all that at that top they dont see whats sinking so the frogs come out and grab that

 

[colen]

Not sure how much of a help this will be, or if it will even work for that matter, but your post got me thinking. I have a similar problem in one of my tanks, it has various barbs who love to eat, and will eat TONS of food. I find it hard to get a good feed in for my bottom dwellers (mostly cory cats).

What I was thinking of doing is getting a peace of tube/pipe, a solid peace that is and place it in the back corner of my tank, leaving it exposed a couple of inches, and leaving a gap about 2 inches before the substrate.

I will start feeding my fish at the opposite end of the tank so all my barbs will be on one side getting as much food as possible. While they are over there, distracted and fighting over the food, I will place food in the pipe at the opposite end, which will sink and fall in the corner, hopefully allowing the corys to eat.

Not sure if it’ll work or not, but I am going to give it a try, I’m sure it will take a little while for the corys to realize there is a good source of food there, and hopefully they’ll get into the routine of things allowing them to get more food.

I’ll keep you updated on how I make out. I guess this really wouldn’t be much of a help inless you are trying to feed bottom dwellers.

Anyhow, good luck!

Colen.

 

[inflexion]

deffinately keep me posted on how it goes this would help my frogs

 

[Sky042]

colen it's almost the opposite problem I have. I have the conflict in the bottom feeders. Pictus cats who can eat with frightening speed and consume so much they look like they're going to pop and then the clown loaches who are a little slower to come out an investigate what the commotion is and they miss the food.

I feed bloodworms, Mysis shrimp, hikaris cichlid gold, hikari sinking carnivore pellets, hikari siniking tropical pellets and hikari algae discs along with flake foods(obviously not all at the same time.)

 

[LoachLover]

Usually if the clown loaches are hungry enough, they are pretty agressive eaters themselves. They could just be picking up food that the other fish miss too.

 

[pica_nuttalli]

the feeding tube thing does give me an idea. provided that your pictus are bigger around than your clowns, you could rig up a plexiglass box such that only clowns could get in or out of it. attach a long tube or pipe to a hole in the top of the box so you can drop food down into it. put the box in one of the front corners of your tank.

hopefully your clowns will not only realize that's a good place for them to go eat, they'll eventually start to lurk there when they get hungry. once you reach that point, you can probably remove the box from the tank and just feed the clowns from that location. just throw some distraction food in at the other end first.

 

[Sky042]

Last night I tried a new brand of bloodworms that stay floating. Usually I defrost bloodworms and pour them into the tank. This time I just tried the new ones and let them float. Most of the fish got to eat before anything hit the bottom and got to the pictus cats.

Most of the clowns even came out to eat except for JW my largest clown who is also the most skittish one.