What Do You Feed Your Pleco?

[*Fishkies*]

What do you all feed your pleco's? I'm just curious as I have a common pleco and am looking for some more food ideas!

 

[stang1]

My Plecos love cucumber, courgette and algae wafers. Keep meaning to try them on other vegetables!

 

[typhoon]

well i feed mine on a few things spinach, cucumber, potato, lettuce or cabbage leaves the algae wafers or tablets also fed them peas aswell

 

[andyw823]

Mine love corgette, peas, also eat cucumber, potato and alge wafer. Have tried carrot but no interest and also letuce,not much in the way of vitamins but they will try it!

 

[andyw823]

On the topic of feeding, what plecs like prawn? I have a BN, Clown and a Leopard Frog plec!

 

[*Fishkies*]

Do you you all just put the lettuce, cucumber, potato, cabage and spinach leaves/pieces in there? Or do you have to warm anything up like cook it before or not?

 

[sophos9]

Dont forget he L's that like bloodworm, brine shrimp, prawns ets...

 

[LisaLQ]

On the topic of feeding, what plecs like prawn? I have a BN, Clown and a Leopard Frog plec!

Omnis and carnivores will like prawn, so your BN and leopard frog will, but your clown will eat mainly bogwood, then veggies and plec wafers

 

[*Fishkies*]

Well i'm trying some lettuce for the first time tonight, so i'll see how that goes...

 

[*Fishkies*]

Alrighty so I don't think my pleco like the lettuce, he didn't touch it at all. He prefers his spirulina wafers, pellet food and flake food over lettuce. Guess i'll try some cucumber or zucchini later.

 

[Jozlyn]

Persevere with the vegies, I don't actually think they know that it is food at first. Most LFS's don't bother putting fresh food in their tanks.

When I first started putting in zucchini or cucumber none of my fish went near it, but after a few times they worked it out and love it, as soon as I put it in now the BN is there first munching away and defending it till it's had enough, then the other fish get to have some!

Don't leave cucumber in for too long either, it'll make the tank go very cloudy really quicly. The zucchini will as well but takes heaps longer.

Cook peas for a few seconds in the microwave, de-shell them, moosh them up a bit and put them in.

As for the potato, I now have a question to add! Do you cook it first or put it in raw?

 

[Mystix212]

With my pleco's, I have 1 BN at 1.75" and 2 Common ones at 2.5". Long time ago I used to let them eat the remaining flakes, pellets and bloodworms from all the other fish. Not much growth rate, if any at all. Untill I threw in 3 peices of cucumber weighted with a peice of lead. (You can get these from live plants as they use these lead strips to weight them).

I've been doing this for probably 2 months now and they had a growth explosion, before they were 1" for the BN and 1.5" for the commons. A strange thing is when I first put it in, roughly 15 seconds into it being in the tank and all of my 5 clown loaches (3"-4.5") were going nuts for the sliced cucumber. They even had they're 'blades' out fighting over it.

When the plecs caught on they to were using they're stabbers to get rid of the clowns. No-one got hurt.

I usually put 3-4 .25" thick peices of cucumber in at once and leave it in thier overnight after thier night feeding. By morning only a very fine edging of the cucumber is left and the plecs have huge stomachs.

I have never had any fouling of the water or rotting as such.

I plan on adding different vegetables and sprinula algae foods very soon.

 

[bobbyami]

My royal, gibbecep and golden nugget pleco all love cucumber, along with sweet potato! i try to give it to them once-twice a week. They finish 1/4 of a cucumber in a day! greedy little things! they also do get bloodworms, daphne and brine when it falls to the bottom. otherwise they get pleco pellets.

 

[morgan]

Commons need some protein as well when they get large. Mine has prawn once a week. The other fish eat it too. The next night I give them peas.

 

[Nick Bramley]

my little bristlenose loves cucumber and even though hes only about two inches he fights like hell to keep the algae wafers to himself, taking on my sailfin mollies and my four cories who seem to like them aswell, hes a tough little fella

Nick