RipSlider
Fish Crazy
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2006
- Messages
- 210
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Hello folks.
Up until recently, my plec ( a bog standard one ) has been pretty much exclusively eating Algae tablets, althogh sometimes he would shuffle over dropped flake or pellet if he was awake.
He's a pretty big fish, probably 18 inches long, so I assume that he has a healthy appertite, although he doesn't feed a lot when the lights are on.
In my tank I have a number of species that appreciate fish based protien, such as Festival's, firemouths, Geo's, along with a shoal of Botia loaches that devour anything at all edible. I orginally fed mussel, as that is all that my Puffer ( Fig 8 ) would eat.
However, I have recently switched to prawn, due to not being able to find mussel as easily. Now I have an issue in that the fish go nuts every time I feed it, and I have to hand feed the puffer to make sure it gets fed at all. The entire tank seems to try to gorge itself on prawns.
The thing is, my plec has also joined in the prawn addiction, and will chase down prawns in mid water and have eaten then before they hit the bottom.
This isn't really the behaviour that I expect from a plec, and I can't find anything about it in the books. However, he looks in the best health he ever has, so I don't *think* I should be concerned.
Do anyone have any thoughts? Is it OK for me to keep feeding, or should I try to keep him/her away from the prawns?
Of note is that I also have a royal tiger planque, who, although supposedly a wood eater, has always seemed to have an exclusive meat based diet, so it seems that plec/planque family CAN survive eating fish/meat.
Many thanks in advance for your thoughts.
Steve
oh..btw.. before people get concerned, all these fish are in a 1,400l tank, so having geo's, a plec etc is not an issue as they all have plenty of space. Still have loads of stocking room, but keeping the tank understocked on purpose.
Up until recently, my plec ( a bog standard one ) has been pretty much exclusively eating Algae tablets, althogh sometimes he would shuffle over dropped flake or pellet if he was awake.
He's a pretty big fish, probably 18 inches long, so I assume that he has a healthy appertite, although he doesn't feed a lot when the lights are on.
In my tank I have a number of species that appreciate fish based protien, such as Festival's, firemouths, Geo's, along with a shoal of Botia loaches that devour anything at all edible. I orginally fed mussel, as that is all that my Puffer ( Fig 8 ) would eat.
However, I have recently switched to prawn, due to not being able to find mussel as easily. Now I have an issue in that the fish go nuts every time I feed it, and I have to hand feed the puffer to make sure it gets fed at all. The entire tank seems to try to gorge itself on prawns.
The thing is, my plec has also joined in the prawn addiction, and will chase down prawns in mid water and have eaten then before they hit the bottom.
This isn't really the behaviour that I expect from a plec, and I can't find anything about it in the books. However, he looks in the best health he ever has, so I don't *think* I should be concerned.
Do anyone have any thoughts? Is it OK for me to keep feeding, or should I try to keep him/her away from the prawns?
Of note is that I also have a royal tiger planque, who, although supposedly a wood eater, has always seemed to have an exclusive meat based diet, so it seems that plec/planque family CAN survive eating fish/meat.
Many thanks in advance for your thoughts.
Steve
oh..btw.. before people get concerned, all these fish are in a 1,400l tank, so having geo's, a plec etc is not an issue as they all have plenty of space. Still have loads of stocking room, but keeping the tank understocked on purpose.
