Interesting behaviours of Spatuloricaria

[Fallen_Leaves16]

Figured it was probably worthwhile to put some info down in a thread.

Most Spatuloricaria tend to prefer to lift or turn over objects with their mouth while foraging for food; oftentimes I'll see large caquetae "picking up" leaves (I imagine their papillose lips aid them in that endeavour) and setting them aside; they have the strength to move fairly heavy (80g+) rocks, too, though they mostly just shift those a bit. I do think that providing them the opportunity to browse about in this manner is a rather nice means of enrichment.
Their bite force is insane as well- I watched a particularly large female caquetae simply destroy a large ramshorn snail (albeit one with a somewhat thin shell) as if it were paper; I have no doubt that a bite from one would be capable of inflicting some damage on a fish, if they were ever inclined to hunt. Almost reminds me of Leporacanthicus, with the sharp, pronounced dentition.
I once found them completely devoid of colour; they were an awfully bright shade of semi-translucent white. Turns out the filters malfunctioned many hours prior, and I just didn't realize it. The fish were almost completely immobile, and only gradually regained their colour after two hours of the filters being replaced. I assume they're incredibly sensitive to hypoxic conditions, which does make sense, but the reaction to the conditions was rather unexpected.

I will try to get and/or upload pictures later.

[Kirin]

It is no doubt interesting from a behavioral aspect. These fishes are clear carnivores, morphologically and from the few ecological studies. Carnivorous species I've noticed generally have very mobile jaws but there are exceptions where jaws are reduced. There is a slight exception with some of the Peckoltia group but if they do in fact feed on seeds more there might be some shared morphology to manipulate them if you don't have the pharyngeal jaws to crunch them. From memory Lujan et al. (2011) hypothesized the jaw morphology of Spatuloricaria to be getting invertebrates out of small crevices. Which might well be the case but in stores they spend a lot of time on the substrate and are much more adapted at dealing with a substrate then Scobinancistrus, Leporacanthicus etc.
I think they are some what an intermediate as while dealing with the substrate but like Scobinancistrus they do have reasonably strong jaws so like you have noticed they are dealing with molluscs which is a tricky task. Fishes are usually either crushers or extractors for molluscs. Scobinancistrus and Leporacanthicus seem to be largely extractors. Loricariinae well depends on the taxa.
I would experiment with different snails though and keep an eye out for fragments. Malaysian trumpets and you'd be surprised.

[Fallen_Leaves16]

It is no doubt interesting from a behavioral aspect. These fishes are clear carnivores, morphologically and from the few ecological studies. Carnivorous species I've noticed generally have very mobile jaws but there are exceptions where jaws are reduced. There is a slight exception with some of the Peckoltia group but if they do in fact feed on seeds more there might be some shared morphology to manipulate them if you don't have the pharyngeal jaws to crunch them. From memory Lujan et al. (2011) hypothesized the jaw morphology of Spatuloricaria to be getting invertebrates out of small crevices. Which might well be the case but in stores they spend a lot of time on the substrate and are much more adapted at dealing with a substrate then Scobinancistrus, Leporacanthicus etc.
I think they are some what an intermediate as while dealing with the substrate but like Scobinancistrus they do have reasonably strong jaws so like you have noticed they are dealing with molluscs which is a tricky task. Fishes are usually either crushers or extractors for molluscs. Scobinancistrus and Leporacanthicus seem to be largely extractors. Loricariinae well depends on the taxa.
I would experiment with different snails though and keep an eye out for fragments. Malaysian trumpets and you'd be surprised.

Thanks! I probably should grab some Malaysian trumpets sometime.
My water's awfully soft, and snails typically do poorly; I think the ramshorn the Spatuloricaria crunched into pieces had a particularly brittle shell.
I would think that they inhabit rocky, fast-flowing streams with a predominantly sandy substrate in situ; Spatuloricaria caquetae do tend to mouth sand often and seem fairly adept at digging and shuffling sand around, in addition to moving around rocks and suchlike. Well, the adults do, at least; I actually don't think I remember seeing juveniles do that much at all. The moving rocks and digging thing, I mean.
They do have surprisingly mobile jaws. I even found a thread on PC some number of years old where a person claimed to have been bitten by a Spatuloricaria.

[Kirin]

If you're concerned about the water hardness many Ampullariidae, apple snails are found in softer waters, they seem to be much more omnivorous so maybe are one of the many who get their calcium more from their diet.
Maybe there is an ontogenetic change in their diets, it's never been studied in Loricariidae but for many I can't see reasons for it as they aren't that gape limited.
Catfishes can be such angry fishes it seems so wouldn't be surprised if one could bite it wouldn't. I've only had mostly scratches from Loricariids but have had cuts from Aspredinid pectoral fins.