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Hi All,

I have been keeping a P.maccus for just over a month now he/she is a juvenile and although very skittish looks healthy. I have never seen the fish eat any algae wafers or fresh veg that I have put in the tank not to say it does after dark although wafers don't appear to get touched and have to remove the following day.

My question is can the P.maccus survive on eating wood alone?

Although panaques do eat wood, I firmly believe wood alone is insufficient to nourish them and keep them alive for an extended period of time. Continue offering wafers, tablets, and veggies. He will need it.
It is quite normal for newly introduced P. Maccus to be very reclusive. However, try to provide it with more wood, stones, plants and hiding spots to make it feel secure in its new environment. This will encourage it come out more often and finally eat.

try New Era Pleco Sticks or SAK Green

mine are eating Hikari algae wafers, but only at night. so i feed them right before i go to bed.

Try garlic, which is supposedly an appetite stimulant. Either buy garlic extract, and soak the wafer or veggies in it, or buy some garlic, cut it and rub it on the food item. Or you could buy food which has garlic in it (NLS Thera A+).

I had a trio that I kept for about 3 years on mostly wood alone.

They were kept with some small rasboras, who got flake, not a lot was wasted by the rasboras. The rasbora school probably weighed less than a single pleco anyway. I did occasionally give them potato and cucumber, especially at first, but they did not seem to eat it. I'd see some marks on potato, but not any on cucumber.

When the tank crashed (overfeeding... fishsitter) the wood I took out of the 20 gallon tank nearly filled a 5 gallon bucket. I had the dark topical wood that you get in the LFS as well as apple and pear cuttings about an inch in diameter and some willow pieces. The fruit and and willow had the bark left on.

The three did not breed though and growth was very slow for all three (though I didn't have a group to compare them with and no one has accused them of growing quickly.)

So keep offering other food, but don't wreck the tank chemistry by leaving too much vegetable matter in there. If you have good wood (I guess mine was, but I don't know about yours) it will last quite a while while it gets used to eating wafers or vegetables.

Hi all,

as well as apple and pear cuttings about an inch in diameter and some willow pieces. The fruit and and willow had the bark left on.

That is probably the relevant bit for feeding them wood, there is very little nutritional value in hard dead woods like Mopani or Bog-wood, but younger, softer wood will have more food value.
The major area food source actually in the wood would be the cambial layer at the junction of bark and wood. Nutritional studies on Panaque spp. indicates that they are mainly getting their nutrition from the fungal mycelia in the wood, details in last post on this thread <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... it=+German> and some recent research <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... it=+German>

I'd keep adding fresh wood and vegetables, particularly fairly hard ones like Sweet potato, Yam, par-boiled Carrot, Green beans etc and they will eventually feed on them (at night).

cheers Darrel

dw1305 wrote:Nutritional studies on Panaque spp. indicates that they are mainly getting their nutrition from the fungal mycelia in the wood, details in last post on this thread <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... it=+German> and some recent research <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... it=+German>

I'd keep adding fresh wood and vegetables, particularly fairly hard ones like Sweet potato, Yam, par-boiled Carrot, Green beans etc and they will eventually feed on them (at night).

Thanks for sharing that info, Darrel. So, they are getting nutrition from fungus that grows on/in wood. Makes sense seeing how so many things are interconnected in our world.

In addition to that fine list of vegetables, I would also recommend feeding quartered zucchini. You can stick a stainless steel fork in each quarter to hold them down on the bottom where the panaque will be more likely to find and eat them.

Hi All,

Thanks for the replies and advice. Those links were really helpful so thanks Darrel and I will now go hunting for appropriate woods over the country park and also persevere with different veggies.