Neat things to see in tanks & Diet matters

[TwoTankAmin]

I have been making a shift to feeding Repashy as a major component in the diet of my plecos. I am working with several of the products and I recently made my first batch of a mix of Meat Pie and Soilent Green. So far the fish love the Repashy. I started with Spawn and Grown in a few breeding and growout tanks.

One of my temporary tanks is a 50 gal. It always holds assassin snails, amano shrimp but the fish rotate. Its main purpose is to clean algae off of plants. Recently it received 25 small rummy nose to be grown out and last week I moved the black C. schultzei in as well. So I figured I would drop in a couple of small hunks of the Repashy mix above for them.

Next time I do this I need to have my camera. Watching a dozen+ tetras attack the food is neat. They are like miniature sharks or crocs, They bite down and then twist sharply to rip off a tiny chunk. Now I see how they and piranahs are related But even more fun was watching a swarm of amano shrimp covering the Repashy. Amanos love to pick up and carry off a piece of food to try and eat it in peace before others converge. I regularly see them make off with whole mini-sticks. Once they figured out they could not move a blob of Repashy, they were swarming and their little claws were going a mile a minute ripping off teeny pieces to eat.

I am not sure the poor corys got any of it . I did throw in some flakes for the Tetras trying to lure them away. When that worked, the amanos moved in.

I should mention that the plecos love the Repashy. I have 450 and 236 spawns and have a few others caving seriously but not yet spawning. I will admit I got a bit lax about diet. I was feeding more easy stuff- flake and sticks. the result is what one might expect, spawning slowed. It is so much less work to feed the flakes and sticks than things like Repashy, frozen or live. After 16 years of feeding tanks spread over 4 rooms and 2 buildings it became easy to get lazy. I forgot how much diet matters.

[Narwhal72]

My L46 zebras wouldn't eat Repashy Spawn N grow or Omnivore until I started mixing in some FD bloodworms. Now they eat it but not as enthusiastically as other fish I feed it to. They would much rather eat blackworms or frozen bloodworms it seems. I have some Grub Pie to try but so far haven't mixed any up.

Andy

[synolover]

I just mixed up the Morning Wood for my panaqolus for the first time and am excited to see how they'll take to it. I've heard a lot of good things.

[TwoTankAmin]

Because of how I bought mine, it arrived at 3 different times. I got The Fruut Luups from Stephan at Catcon. I fed that first to pretty much all my Hypans. They all ate it right away. My next arrival was the Spawn and Grown and that went into a limited number of tanks. Some of the 236 fry were on it even with the bright room lights on. My final load was the Meat Pie/Soilent green and again this was readily accepted by everything. The mixture mentioned above was about 3 to 1, Meat to Green.

@Narwhal72
Andy I wonder if you feed again w/o the bloods added if they will take it. Sometimes fish need a little time to decide they will try or like a new food. You also might try reducing the blood content over a number of days. I found that worked great for weening angel fry off newly hatched BBS and onto 100% frozen Cyclop-eeze.

I still never understand posts about fish refusing an appropriate food and even some not so appropriate one. Some may take a few tries, but in the end all the fish I have ever kept are pigs, they will eat about anything I offer. The recent 236 I got in took a couple of days to eat. But then they had been packed, shipped, repacked and reshiped in about 3 -4 days. It took them until the 2nd day after they arrived before they ate all the mini earthworm and veggie sticks I fed. Soon after they gobbled up the Fruut Luups and then the mix.

I was also told that some people will mix a small amount of the morning wood with some of the other foods to make them hold together better/longer. I cant say if that is true or not or a good idea or not.

[NCE12940]

I mix the Repashy Morning Wood with just about everything. It does help with firming up the other Repashy foods.

[Narwhal72]

TTA. I didn't start adding the bloodworms until recently. I had been trying it with them off an on for more than a year.

[TwoTankAmin]

@Narwah72

What amazes me about this hobby is how varied it is. This includes people being able to do essentially similar things and get dissimilar results. From mu very first fish in my first tank to this day, none of the fish I have had has ever refused to eat any appropriate food I fed and some which were not so ideal. Mostly they are pigs with fins.A few have take a couple of tries while feeding nothing else for them to get it. Most of them eat like starving people who are taken to an all you can eat buffet. I am scared to put my hand in the water holding food in the tank with my large clown loaches.

I am curious for how long you offered them only Repashy and they still refused it before you gave up and went to other foods?

[Narwhal72]

I don't record feedings but I fed Repashy right after I got them at Cataclysm in October 2015. In spring of 2016 I picked up a bunch of frozen bloodworms and started feeding that more often which got a much greater response.

My thoughts are the scent is very important and bloodworms are much more powerful an attractant than what is in Spawn N grow and Omnivore.

I fed some fruut luups the other day and it disappeared quickly. But there are a lot of snails in that tank now and that may be the reason why.