Sailfin pleco learning to feed midwater

[Chrysichthys]

She lives in our tank at work. I couldn't make it in to feed her last weekend because of bad weather, so she got very hungry, and on Monday a new feeding technique emerged. She now tries to eat granular food before it hits the bottom. It's a hit and miss process. Mostly miss, actually, because the basic anatomy is wrong, but she usually manages to swallow two or three.

The big, questing sucker mouth is a great sea monster impersonation!

[DutchFry]

haha that's something i would like to see!

can you make a short youtube movie of this?

[loachy_406]

Look what I found. Royal Pl*co coming out of the water to eat courgette! From about 1.30
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Pretty clever!

[Chrysichthys]

can you make a short youtube movie of this?

I don't have a videocam but I might be able to find someone who does.

[MatsP]

I have a common

Pterygoplichthys pardalis

that comes to the surface to eat floating cichlid pellets.

In this book: http://www.planetcatfish.com/books/book ... cle_id=321
there is a picture of a hypostomus doing an "upside down" to get flake food, which I have also seen my hypostomus do 20 years ago when I had it.

--
Mats

[Barbie]

I had a P. gibbiceps that would swim up to the surface of a 2' tall tank and then invert and swim upside down across the top so you could drop pellets in his mouth. The clown loaches were outcompeting him for the bottom feeder feed types, but he grew like mad once he figured that out. It might have been because he was so fun to let suck the wafers out of your fingers ;). I am forever telling people not to overfeed their fish. Luckily he was in a big tank, hehe. Obviously the loaches in there hadn't figured out how to do this!



Barbie

[Chrysichthys]

there is a picture of a hypostomus doing an "upside down" to get flake food, which I have also seen my hypostomus do 20 years ago when I had it

Yes, my gibbiceps does that too. Top, middle and bottom--she does it all.

[L.BelcherII]

I had a common pl*co that used to come to the surface and eat floating pellets by trapping them to the glass