Watch your fingers

[TwoTankAmin54]

I mostly do not feed by hand. But many years ago I made the mistake of keeping clown loaches and my first discus in the same tank, my in-wall 75 gal. with live plants. Like many fish keepers I tried my hand at some live foods. One such food was live red wiggler worms. I should also say I stopped even trying live foods after a few years. Too much work and too little space.

So, i got the bright idea one evening of trying to hand feed a worm to the a discus. I grabbed a juicey worms and plunged my hand into the tank near enough to a discus to get its attention. When is noticed the worm, it began swimming towards my hand. It qas about 5 inches from taking the worm when a 5 - 6 inch clown loach darted up from the bottom and snatched the worm out of my hand. The discus bolt in fear, I almost fell of the step ladder and the clown quickly vanished behind the huge log in the tank. I don't know which one of us was more surprised/frightened more.

That was the first and last time I tried to hand feed my fish. The below is not me or my fish.

 

[TwoTankAmin54]

The first time I saw a vid of skippers crawling even farther up the persons arm past his wrist to get more worms, I wanted to have a tank of them so badly. But, by then, I had all the tanks I could fit and many of them were for pleco breeding which supported my hobby.

Besides, I am allergic to blood worms. I can only feed them using cubes and gloves, so I eventually gave them up completely.