whats the best food for tatia perugiae

[simotastic]

hi if anyone no,s the best food for these evil little fish could you please tell me

[apistomaster]

T. perugiae seem to be insectivorous so another food you can culture for them would be wingless fruit flies. I consider frozen Blood worms and the freeze dried forms the best easy to buy food for them. They are the larval stage of Chironomid Gnats.
They also like live worms; Black, Tubifex, Grindal and White worms. The latter two are easy to culture.

[Martin S]

Mine go crazy for bloodworm, but in frozen form as they are generally surface feeders so then can grab large chunks from the defrosting cubes.
Brineshrimp don't get the same response, although I have seen thm take small catfish pellets and broken catfish tablet pieces from the floor of the aquarium as well. From experience, bloodworm appears to be their most favourite food.
HTH
Martin

[Marc van Arc]

Mine go crazy for bloodworm, but in frozen form as they are generally surface feeders so then can grab large chunks from the defrosting cubes.

Hi Matrin,
This has been discussed before (but I've forgotten the conclusion), but I would personally defrost the cubes beforehand. Defrosted bloodworms will float as well - although not all of them.

[apistomaster]

Hi Marc,
I go through 50 lbs of frozen blood worms a year and there are times when I defrost it first to make titration of the amount per tank appropriate for the number of fish but otherwise I normally toss the frozen pieces in my tanks.
I have been doing this for as long as frozen foods have been on the market. I use my own frozen beef heart in still frozen pieces and have raised 1000's of Discus on the stuff. In the case of beef heart using it frozen greatly reduces the potential for the dispersal of potentially polluting particles.
I have never seen any adverse effects from using food still in the frozen form. The fish just eat the thawed worms off the surface of the chunks.
I guess I missed any discussions on this subject. What problems feeding still frozen foods have been documented ?

[Marc van Arc]

Hi Larry,
I may be wrong of course, but I'm pretty sure it has been discussed in the past. Thing is that I've forgotten the outcome, so I may be wrong here as well, but I have always thought it was bad for fishes to eat food that is considerably colder than their body temperature.
Which I can understand, as I know how I feel after gulping away a large icecream. Of course I know these can't be compared, but I'd rather be on the safe side especially with greedy eaters like auchenipterids.
I daren't even change water that is 10 degrees colder than the water in the tank, let alone that I would feed fishes food that's about minus 10 degrees - which is 35 degrees colder than the average tank temp.
But again, I may be wrong in this. For me defrosting first is an old habit as well and I certainly don't have to feed the amounts that you mention.

[apistomaster]

Hi Marc,
You have species of fish which are capable of swallowing whole chunks of frozen food whole and I would agree that probably doesn't do them any good.
I used to at least partially thaw my beef heart blend when I fed it to 20 inch Arowanas or other very large fish.
Discus are the largest fish I keep anymore but they can't eat very large pieces, least of all solidly frozen ones. Every thing else I keep is fairly small so all they can handle are the thawing blood worms off a chunk or small bits of beef heart off a solid piece. So they never really are eating frozen food even if I'm using frozen pieces.

[simotastic]

Thank you all for the advice. I have my own method of feeding these fish and there tank mates. Put x2 cubes of frozen food usually brine shrimp and blood worm in to a plastic tub. Pour boiling water on to them and leave for 5 mins. Use sharp scissors to chop the food up. Pour cold water in to the tub to balance the temperature after the cubes have completely defrosted.

Once this is archived, using long tongs grab some of the defrosted food and place it in font of the dormant tatias until they go mad and starts hunting. I have found if you just throw the lot in the tank due to the position of the tatais resting ledge the food misses it completely and they don't get any food. This is mainly due to my big angel fish stuffing it self.

I have found that they really like live moths, but you have to be careful how big the moth is. If you give then a moth that is to big they will still eat it but this can cause DEATH as i had this problem before.I had 3 tatais but instead of working as a team and tearing the moth apart the smallest one ate it whole. I found it floating the next day with part of the moth still hanging out of its mouth.

[apistomaster]

I only kept T. perugiae once. I bought 20 and gave them their own 20 gal long aquarium.
I had hoped to breed them someday. Then I a made a classic beginner's mistake. I found some H. pulcher Tetras at my LFS, the first time I have ever had a chance to buy any. I put them in with my Tatia perugiae, skipping proper quarantine and they introduced a virulent infection of what may have been Columnaris. Whatever it was it killed all my Tatia and the dumb Tetras to boot.
Every so often I guess I need a remedial lesson in the fundamentals of good fish keeping practices.
I haven't come across any since then at a price I was willing to pay but I do want to try keeping them again with the intent of breeding them.
They are still one of my favorite catfish and I would really like to succeed in having them spawn for me.

One of my favorite ways of feeding frozen blood worms, and this is how I feed them to my Heckel discus, is to place them in a bag made of plastic netting. I use a small weight to sink the sock-like net so the food is suspended in mid water. I get these bags by buying the sealed media bags sold for AquaClear HOB filters which contain the ceramic biomedia. The mesh openings are the perfect size to hold the cubes of food but let the thawed portions through.
The Tatia perugiae prefer to feed off the surface so the bag method isn't the perfect way to feed them. I can understand the need to feed them differently in some community tanks because they otherwise may not get their fair share. It has become such a fun way to feed the discus because they have learned that the bag is associated with food. This methods works very well for feeding them frozen beef heart, too.
I often leave the bag hanging in the tank and whenever the discus are hungry they let me know it be gathering around the empty bag just staring at it, waiting for some food to appear. This is a perfect example of how a fish can train it's owner to perform his tricks. When they start staring at the bag like that, I obediently fill it with a piece of food.

[simotastic]

i know when it is feeding time in my tank as the two angel fish follow me when i walk past the tank. Also when i see my checker head syno and my upsidedown catfish appear fro the bac wall caves.