favorite foods of s. petricola and image link

barbara · Post by **barbara** » 06 Mar 2003, 14:19

I am wondering what foods y'all who have s. petricolas find them to favor. Does anyone feed them California Blackworms? Mine seem to prefer bloodworms (frozen) but also will eat some Formula 45, a brine shrimp (among other things) flake...maybe. Does anyone have success with cichlid pellets? or find that they eat snails? I have crushed snails for them and they eat vigorously of them but it doesn't seem that they eat the ones LIVING in the tank....or perhaps they do but are too well fed to bother.

Here is a link to some images of them that I posted to the catfish ID forum. I got a response that they do seem to be dwarf:

http://8cats2manyfish.tripod.com/maitri/id9.html

Sid Guppy · Post by **Sid Guppy** » 06 Mar 2003, 15:40

They eat EVERYTHING....
But it's best to feed them with stuff most like the things they eat in the wild.
This means that mosquitolarvae should only be fed sparingly, and that part of the diet (the freeze-food part) should contain many crustaceans and perhaps mollusc meat (mussel, snail etc). And all kinds of flake and pelletfood.
Mine like green stuff too; peas are eaten, same for spinache and all spirulinafoods; because of this they can be combined with Tropheus in a Tang setup. They eat the fresh shoots of Vallisneria gigantea, but the normal variety isn't eaten. They also like brushy algae (those brown black hairs sometimes on the edges of leaves).
Crustaceans: daphnia, cyclops, mysis, krill, gammarus and artemia is all OK, although the last is a bit snotty, so I feed that also sparingly. But live artemia (nauplii) are eaten by old and young Syno's alike. Good crustaceans should contain a lot of chitine (the hard shelled ones). Shrimpmix is also very good (this is a recipe made from whole shrimps with shell, peas and spirulina)
black, white and red (bloodworms) mosquitolarvae only now and then. Mine eat baby snails but not the burrowersnail; that one's got a very hard shell and an operculum (lid). But Ramshorn babies are taken.

Post by **Dinyar** » 06 Mar 2003, 16:09

Sid said it all already and there's little to add. Yes, I do feed blackworms occasionally, cichlid pellets and spirulina flakes more often (note that many brands of spirulina flakes have very little spirulina in them). Frozen chopped krill and mysis shrimp work well. I let the algae grow on the rocks, and they like to graze on that. I think it's my large pollis that are the big snail eaters, but the petris may eat those too. As Sid, said, you should include some veggies in their diet.

Dinyar

barbara · Post by **barbara** » 06 Mar 2003, 16:28

Thanks...that is most helpful. Interestingly I have avoided all veggie stuff but only because when I have tried it, they totally ignored it and so the snails got it all. I will try again and thanks so much for the specifics...I will work on those items particularly and try to sneak in the veggie stuff...and as I do peas for the livebearers and other fish I have in other settings, that I will try mixed with crustacean thingies. I did forget that mysis is one of the foods that they seem to eat, too. So I need to ease them off the bloodworms....I can see a rebellion in the works! LOL

I think long ago they ate readily of the Formula One that I fed them and I think that has krill. I have been going to order cyclops for the pulcher so it is good to know that the petricolas should go for it too. Glad to know about the daphnia as I feed that regularly to my n. pulcher and was wondering if they ate that....it is hard to notice if they eat it as it is so small. I do notice them grazing along the rocks so was wondering if it was algae or something else that they were finding there.

Whew! Great information. I feel I can work with more variety for them now...that is primarily what has been bothering me...using just the same three or four things...variety being usually a good thing.