PlanetCatfish.com

hi!
we are very new to catfish, and have 3 panda cories along with 2 c. metae in a ten gallon.

would love feeding recommendations, even if they are varied, both for amount and type of food and frecuency.

we have been feeding them:
wardley shrimp pellets,
hikari sinking catfish wafers,
whatever daphnia, bloodworms, and omega flake gets past the rasboras,
and have tried both zucchini and cooked peas, but they didnt eat either.

besides what we could do better and how often, does anyone have a recommendation for getting things like bloodworms down and away from our other fish. we have heard the turkey baster idea, and will probably go with that unless we hear another way!

thanks so much!

It's not easy to feed bottom feeders when you have "hungry" or "greedy" top or midwater feeders.

Sinking wafers are good, as long as the upper level fish aren't too big [which shouldn't be the case in a 10g anyways].

Getting bloodworms to the bottom can sometimes be done with a "turkey baster", one of those plastic tubes with a rubber "ball" that you suck up liquid and spurt it out again. So suck up some live bloodworms, and spurt it out at the bottom of the tank. Works as long as the other fish aren't too clever on figuring out what's going on...

Vegetables aren't going to appeal to Cory's, that's recommended for the Loricariid's (Plecos), but cory's don't like it much, and they don't have the appropriate mouth to rasp off bits of vegetable the way a pleco does.
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Mats

You could feed them at night. Catfish are active at night, most other fish aren't.

thanks. good advice...

given that at the moment our bloodworms and daphnia are freeze-dried. do you think that in time the live food (vs. freeze-dried) will have a large impact on their health.

also, if you were having to measure amounts with two very different size of cories, how would you be dividing the, well, portions. (don't want to underfeed them in my attempts to keep the tank clean, and with our other fish we can feed enough that they eat in a minute or two, but of course with the cories is no plausible to measure that way...)

thanks again...

In general, fish are better of "under" than "over" fed.

Freeze dried food is better than fresh food because it can be portioned out over a long period. It's also much less expensive, as it's a lot less difficult to distribute and keep in stock (aside from getting it wet, setting it alight or driving over it with a truck, you can't really destroy it during shipping/storing).

But freeze dried food looses a little bit of flavour and texture (compare a soup made from fresh ingredients and one of those packets of freeze dried soup). Also, live food is more "interesting" to the fish, because it gives them something to chase.

Live food need to be kept cool (but not frozen) so the cost of transporting and storing this food is much higher.

An intermediate form is frozen food, such as froozen bloodworms. That's like frozen or fresh food to us, it's lost a little bit of it's original taste and texture, but not a whole lot.

Bloodworms are better than daphnia for the bottomdwellers, as they sink (if you defrost them before putting them in the water).

Looking at my fish when I feed them fresh vs. frozen food, I know whcih they prefer...

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Mats