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Would potatoes be a good main diet for L200s?
I noticed thee like potatoes more than squash, and i always have potatoes here, will potatoes be a good main diet for my plecos? I sometimes give them algae wafers also and they also get some Hikari lion head sinking pellets which i feed my clown loaches.

I give mine sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas).

Regular Potato Solanum tuberosum is acceptable food, but it's fairly low in most nutrients (except vitamin C, which is good for your fish).

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Mats

MatsP wrote:I give mine sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas).

Regular Potato Solanum tuberosum is acceptable food, but it's fairly low in most nutrients (except vitamin C, which is good for your fish).

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Mats

thanks Mats I guess one of the reason i like potatoes is they sink easily and doesn't have to be held down, any other veggies which will sink and is good and nutritious? will plecos eat garlic?

If only Van Gogh knew this. One of his most famous paintings is called de aardappeleters - the potato eaters

I'll always think of L200 in the future, when this painting is refferred to

Some people certainly seem to think that Garlic is a good fish-food ingredient - I have on occasion given garlic to the fish, but it's not something I consider "frequent food".

I have a set of cheap stainless teaspoons that I use for weighing down food that doesn't sink by itself. Sweet potato varies - sometimes is sinks, sometimes it doesn't.

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Mats

hi squid (is this really your name )
I also feed my cats patatoes as well as sweet patatoes.
garlic is mixed into self made fish food...as garlic should contain some antibiotic funtion...which might be no too bad. but i never tried garlic in peaces...

rgds
farid

I have no idea for garlic on fish, but on humans, the medical effect is mostly placebo, it appears from REAL research. Sure, the health-food store will tell you it's good - but that's not the same as it being proven medically to work.

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Mats

hi mats,
i actually used garlic on my fishfood...i peace on about 800g of food mixture...with vegies, shrimps, shells etc...

i got the tip from a friend of mine... "Cattleya" also a famous catfishbreeder in switzerland

farid

I use garlic in my home-made fish food (my version of european-style "shrimp mix") because it's my unscientific anecdotal observation that the garlic makes the food more palatable to the fish.
As for health effects, I don't think garlic really have any. There is a study where garlic was successfully used to treat intestinal parasites in fish, but I'm skeptical.

When you use potatoes or sweet potatoes for food, do you boil them first!?
The home made recepies, what are they!?

hi there,
as you're from belguim...you might understand some german
use the drop down menu on the left and go to "Fischfutter"
http://www.veloofahren.ch/Aquarium/selfmade.html

i grind it all...with a mixer...depending if you'r making foor for carnivor or omnivor feeding animals...i use more or less shrimps and shells...pangasuim might work as well...some spirlina tabs...some sushi algae "nori leaves" (asia food store)...everything is raw!

farid

There are lots of recipes for home-made food - a mix of vegetable and seafood type things is generally a good plan.

I never boil potato or sweet potato for adult fish. If it's fry (or tiny fish such as Otos), then boiling it will make it more easy to bite chunks of.

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Mats

hi mats
how about eggs...did you ever feed the yellow of an egg?

farid

Eggyolk is probably a good fish-food [would need to be either cooked or dried onto a stone or such], but no, I've never tried that. Despite it being mentioned in "my" article, it wasn't my idea, and I've not used the "egg-fishfood-paint-on-rocks" method either.

I tried a new recipe for fishfood on Sunday. I will do some more test-feeds [initial results are encouraging] and report back.

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Mats

thanks for the tips still have not been able to get other veggies.
btw mats how is your new recipe ?
I added another l200 to my tank, but noticed he doesn't have a wood of his own? my old l200's seem to get along though?

My most recent batch is mainly for the carnivorous fish, and it's roughly like this:
1. Mix half a cup of water with a couple of spoons of Agar flakes, and bring to the boil. [Gelatin can be used, but dissolves in water more than Agar does - in the UK you can find Agar in the "exotic food section" in supermarkets].
2. Blend 2 parts prawns, 2 parts mussels and 1 part peas to a fine-grained "mush". A clove of garlic can add some extra flavour.
3. Add blended ingredients to boiling agar mix, and bring it all to the boil.
4. Portion out in Ice-cube tray, let it cool and put in freezer.

Obviously, other ingredients can be used in step 2 - for example sweet potato and courgette instead of prawns and mussels, which would be good for vegetarian fishes.

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Mats

MatsP wrote:My most recent batch is mainly for the carnivorous fish, and it's roughly like this:
1. Mix half a cup of water with a couple of spoons of Agar flakes, and bring to the boil. [Gelatin can be used, but dissolves in water more than Agar does - in the UK you can find Agar in the "exotic food section" in supermarkets].
2. Blend 2 parts prawns, 2 parts mussels and 1 part peas to a fine-grained "mush". A clove of garlic can add some extra flavour.
3. Add blended ingredients to boiling agar mix, and bring it all to the boil.
4. Portion out in Ice-cube tray, let it cool and put in freezer.

Obviously, other ingredients can be used in step 2 - for example sweet potato and courgette instead of prawns and mussels, which would be good for vegetarian fishes.

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Mats

thanks mats Agar is also available here.
would it be safe if my l200's get mostly meaty food? like your mix, then i'll just drop some potatoes , or some veggies if they would like veggies? or shoul di control their meat intake?
i'm not sure how to balance their diet with my clown loaches

L200 is a "mainly vegetarian". If you use the recipe above with a bit more vegetable and less meat, it would probably work fine. I feed one ice-cube of the above once or twice a week, along with algae wafers and some other food to my L128.

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Mats

Me being rather lazy in the kitchen I tend to peel 'Kumara (red sweet potatoe)' by just chopping the edges off leaving the skin and aprrox 15mm of potatoe which I spear with a teaspoon and drop into my driftwood tank where L128 and Panaque Nigrolineatus seem to enjoy the potatoe part but leave the skin.
I have also tried Swede (swedish turnip) but they dont seem so keen on it, tried butternut pumpkin but they ignored it. Shelled peas, and courgette they of course devour.

I don't peel sweet potato - just cut it into slices, spoon/fork through it and drop in the tank. (and I'm pretty sure Kumara is the NZ/Pacific name for Sweet Potato from having looked it up before - if my memory isn't falling to bits, it's actually the Maori name for the "vegetable").

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Mats

MatsP wrote:I don't peel sweet potato - just cut it into slices, spoon/fork through it and drop in the tank. (and I'm pretty sure Kumara is the NZ/Pacific name for Sweet Potato from having looked it up before - if my memory isn't falling to bits, it's actually the Maori name for the "vegetable").

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Mats

Good memory there MatsP, correct Kumara is sweet potatoe. It comes in 3 varieties here, Red, Golden and Yellow. Have only tried the red on my fish (because its the only 1 of the three i like eating myself)

Interesting,
I peel my Kumera, If I don't they leave the skin behind. I used to use the red, but as soon as I moved to the gold they never ate the red again??

Also only the panaque seem to eat this. I think the texture is quite woody.

I also tried to make the Agar "Jellies" once with peas and bloodworms and daphnia and powdered food and spyrlina. Obviously I did not have enough agar as they dissolved as soon as they hit the water, or perhaps the 30 C temp was too warm?

30'C is not too warm - that's the whole point about using Agar vs. Gelatin. Gelatin dissolves in water at warm tank temperatures, Agar stays solid. So, yes, not enough agar vs. other ingredients sounds like the problem. My first attempt didn't work great either.

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Mats

Thanks, a wee job for the weekend then.
Also I use swivel clips, from when I used to fish for fish, as food weights, so I add these to the ice tray while the agar is setting, and then I have a built in weight to get the food to the bottom of the tank.

Cheers

Can't wait to get some agar agar and make my own pleco recipe
btw will agar agar sink? do plecos like the agar agar if i mix too much agar agar?

squid wrote: btw will agar agar sink? do plecos like the agar agar if i mix too much agar agar?

The agar itself is neutrally buoyant to very slightly sinking, ie the mix floats or sinks depending on how much air it contains. Agar has no noticeable taste of its own, all that happens if you use too much is that the mix becomes more firm (and you're wasting agar). Apart from being more stable and more expensive, agar acts and is used like gelatin. Follow the recommendations on the package and you'll be OK.

I use agar as a base for my general 'pleco mix' and they love it.

My mix is...

A bag (1kg) of frozen peas.
A couple of handfulls of shrimps (the little pink coctail ones)
A few prawns with shells still on
A few unmarinated mussles
3 or 4 corgettes
a couple of pieces of garlic

all of the above is blended in a food processor, then tipped into a pot on the stove

then I add 3 or 4 tablespoons of powdered spirulina and stir it all together before adding the agar.

mix it while it heats (but I try not to boil it)

then i pour it into those flexible muffin trays, and into any other flat shallow thing I can find in the kitchen. I then freeze it all and once frozen break it up into useable sized chunks.

User it to feed just about everything in my fish room, plecs of all sorts love it, but alos platies, guppies even my angels get stuck in, plus clown loaces in my show tank. it floats for a few seconds before sinking to the bottom where the agar holds it all together as its eaten. If it all breaks to pieces then you didnt use enough agar.

thanks can't wait till weekend to buy agar and some veggies for my plecos

Well this topic made me sink a potatoe for the first time ever into the tank.
It was one half of a smaller potatoe and about half the body size of my Panaque nigrolineatus = a little bigger than the head of the Panaque.

It was placed there in the evening and in the morning it was barely touched.
So I planned to remove it fairly quick so it wouldn't turn bad. But other doings came first and it took about 4-5 hours before I came back to fix it. By then there where no potatoe left.

... or it was there in the form of immense amounts of white droppings and an empty potatoe peel.
I must say I'm impressed by the speed it was consumed. By the size of the droppings I figure it was mostly just the nigrolineatus taking care of the whole thing.

However potatoes will of course be an extra supplement at times.

Just thought I'd add my diet question to this thread,
I've been feeding fresh Krill to my clown loaches lately, will L200's be able to eat the krill? will it be ok for them to occasionally get some krill if they can eat the krill?