Not Getting Enough To Eat?

KRamgren89 · Feb 7, 2012

hi all.
so yesterday we did a massive clean on our tank, big water change (about 50%) cleaned the gravel, pulled out the plants and cleaned those, pulled out the decor and cleaned those.... well now im wondering, crap, i have some cory's who mainly feed on the bottom, did i just take all their food away?? i know more will build up for them just wondering if it was ok that we did a massive clean job on our gravel..

also i asked in the livebearers section what kind of veggies can i give my platys/mollies/swordtails. i got the response of pea's and cucumber, will these be ok for my bottom feeders like my corydoras and my bamboo shrimp??

Iiriva · Feb 7, 2012

Why did you do that for? Not all the good bacteria the tank needs is in the filter, very much of it is in gravel, decorations and plants as well.

And um, took cory's food away? Build up?

Corys need proper food too, sinking pellets or something like that.

KRamgren89 · Feb 7, 2012

XD yes im sure that didnt make sense, we do feed them we have sinking pellets. they just seemed to happily go over all our decor and eat everything before. we cleaned everything fairly good because we changed the fish in our tank minus the bottom feeders and the plants had an horrible build up of food. i dont know if there is any better way i could put this, what i meant to say was IS IT OK that we did that. our LFS said if we were going to bring our fish back in and move or other fish over to the bigger tank we should clean everything so we did. and i just wanted to make sure we didnt harm the corys or shrimp by doing a gravel clean and cleaning the build up off our plants and decor. we didnt scrub anything just rinse the access food off.

hoping this makes better sense! didnt mean to make it seem like i dont feed my poor corys, we do! but just the sinking granuels like our LFS said. any other imput of what we could feed them (be it dry food. vegggies. live food ect) would be great. im always looking for new ways to do things and maybe some good treats for my little girls n boys.

mislisa · Feb 7, 2012

I don't see that it would be a problem. They'll probably be happy about it actually, as the corys' barbells can be sensitive to build up. I don't know anything about shrimp though.

I feed my corys sinking pellets as well as algae wafers. I feed about once a week with frozen bloodworm as well. I've never noticed them going after the cucumber that i put in for my pleco either.

Good luck!