Pleco Food

[Redbled]

Just purchased a large pleco for my tank. Thing is just gave the tank a super cleaning a couple days ago. So not sure much algae has accrued, usually I don't feed my plecos. Tried some lettuce last night as heard that works, but it just floated around. Other than the algae waffers, what else will plecos eat?

 

[mrV]

It depends what pleco you have. Some of them only eat worms etc.. Some only vegetables...

 

[-=DG=-]

cant go wrong with a bit of cucumber

 

[Nik]

I have a few plecs and they eat a mix diet of the following:

Cucumber - weighed down to sink with a little bid of plant weight.
Potatoe - again weighed to sink.
Hikari Algae Wafers.

They also seem to eat live food if any sinks to the bottom before the swimmers get it.

 

[Pufferpack]

Hi Redbled...as Nik mentioned you need to weigh down your veggies for the plecs, I do this by attaching them to a heavy rock with a simple elastic (well cleaned of course), I say a heavy rock because the plecs we had used to stash the cucumber chunks in the back of caves where it was a pain to dig them out at cleaning time.

Depending on what type of plec it is you may need to provide it with a piece of bogwood(for essential fibers I think), but you should really give it more to eat than just the algae in the tank to keep it healthy. I have found that the common plecs will eat just about anything on the bottom of the tank, including fish that have died.

The 2 we had were doing a great job of cleaning out the algae until they got a taste for frozen bloodworms and beefheart, then they wouldn't touch algae anymore, so you may want to be careful about introducing them to "meat".

Try a couple pinches of flake food soaked in tank water for 5 or 19 seconds, it will sink straight to the bottom and the plecs will have a better chance of getting some.