My curiosity about beans as food stems (no pun intended, but it works, LOL) from the fact that our fish need protein to condition and grow, but for many plecos too much meat causes bloat. The amino acid composition of plant proteins differs slightly from that of animal proteins, so I wonder if plecos can handle more protein in their diet if the protein is from plants and not from animals. That may not be true at all, given that our plecos are, after all, animals and therefore we should expect that their proteins are more like those of other animals and not like those of plants, but the question is still worth asking. Is it the absolute amount of protein in the diet that causes bloat, or is it the amino acid composition of these dietary proteins that causes bloat (or both?)? I'm not looking to muscle-up my plecos with excess proteins (like an athlete on steroids) but I do wish to expand the food options for them, especially for juveniles to promote healthy growth.
With that as a starting point, I can add
DRY HULLED BLACK BEANS (soaked overnight in room-temperature water, skinned, then boiled for 10-15 min) to the list.
Soaking allows the bean skin to peel off (relatively) easily with your fingers. My plecos didn't eat the skins of my black-eyed peas, so those skins became waste floating around in the aquaria (you can see the empty skins in my most recent video of my clown pleco fanning eggs,
here). So I'd rather not put inedible skins in the aquaria if I can help it.
First I fed raw (not boiled) skinned black beans to my plecos. They tried eating these beans, but after several days in the aquarium, the beans remained largely uneaten.
So then I boiled the pre-skinned beans and this time the plecos ate them well (true for albino BNs,
Panaqolus maccus and
Hemiancistrus guahiborum; the beans also disappeared in my tank housing
P. albomaculatus and my black & white lined
Hypancistrus, but I don't know who ate the beans).
Once boiled, the beans will last if stored in a small amount of water in the fridge for at least one week, and can probably be frozen for longer times (although I haven't tried freezing them after cooking).
Here's a photo of what remained of the soaked-and-skinned boiled black beans after just one night in my
P. maccus tank.
Cheers, Eric
During a shopping trip to the veg stall last weekend I was faced with the seasonal changes in available vegetables when i found there was no courgettes, the local shops hadn't had them in for a few days and its their favourite food, though they do get a variety. So i start making a comment I needed them for my fish and then being looked at like i was having a funny five minutes! 
Sometimes people are curious to know more and i show them pictures of my various plecos and what each one prefers, then they kind of see what those little sucker mouths can do to a sweet potato! And they dont think I'm as crazy as they first thought. 
I even met someone who gets me one day as he keeps them also, then the looks became, well- less strange, it was bucketing with rain and it then meant a bigger shopping spree to find some. After checking in several shops with none in stock, i eventually found some at one of the less expensive shops and seeing as there's was quite a few left i grabbed as many as I could, along with sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, runner beans, carrots, squash, and red bell peppers, only to find out the fussy little plecos didn't eat most of them as they weren't from the more expensive shops, and i couldnt use them then as they'd been in a fish tank. 
. Anyone else here get my point, I'd like to know what the foods on your lists are, as will it give me more ideas and potentially lessen the ammount of shops i need to visit, but also start a discussion on good foods for plecos that others may get to see. But please feel free to also extend this to other catfish.
/g/s/1.jpg)
Better go buy some myself. My ABNs did the deed - finally. 
