how to feed baby bristlenose

[tigerking2]

I just got 3 baby albino bristlenose at an aquarium society meeting. They are about 1 inch. What do I feed them? They are trying to eat algae off the sides of the tank but it is a new tank. What do I do? Thanks!

[andywoolloo]

they eat the same as the adults do.

sinking algae wafers, romaine lettuce on a clip, zuchinni, cucumber, apple... some protein once or twice a week, defrosted spirulina shrimp or bloodworms or something, there are two great feeding articles on this site:

http://www.planetcatfish.com/shanesworl ... es+of+food

http://www.planetcatfish.com/shanesworl ... ur+Catfish

[Richard B]

At 1" they are not really babies - my 10mm young are already on adult foodstuffs - see andywoolloo's comment above re; feeding

[tigerking2]

I hope someone sees this futher question. They are not recognizing anything I am putting the the tank. The are trying to eat algae off the tank and gravel and ignoring the cucumbers and wafers. How long will they be ok without getting much food except by accident? Not sure what the previous person fed them.

[andywoolloo]

hmmm.

is there any way to figure out what they ate before, any way you can contact someone from the aquarium club?

if they have never had fresh veg or fruit it will take them a few days to recognize it. I just keep putting it in at night and removing in the morning and continuing that pattern.

mine prefer zuchinni. Maybe your tank had plenty of algae and they are happy as clams with that? it will be gone soon and then they will be hungry and try the other foods. do their bellies look sunken if they go on the glass? are they pooing?

Just keep trying everything , fruit and veg and flake and sinking wafers etc till you find something they like. Have you tried Hikari sinking algae wafers? Or Omega one sinking shrimp pellets? Hey stick a leaf of romaine lettuce in there on a clip, they can't resist that? Can they?

My albino BN doesn't seem to eat anything except the fruit and veg, my regular BN eat anything.

what temp is your tank?

[Richard B]

An animals strongest instinct is to survive - they'll eat something edible rather than starve - have you ever seen a broad leaved plant in a dealers tank with skeleton leaves cos a plec has munched them whe he aint gettin enough food? Keep trying various things - they'll cotton on soon enough

[MatsP]

I moved this topic to the Loricariidae section (because that's where it belongs).

Aside from "keep trying", unless you KNOW what they like, you will probably need to feed the same stuff for a bit - they aren't the most clever when it comes to figuring out what is food and what isn't.

In my feeding article (to the right of this post), I give many suggestions for "home-made food".

--
Mats

[Carp37]

It usually takes me a couple of weeks to get vegetarian/omnivore plecos onto vegetables- for the most part they seem to ignore this type of food until they "discover" it, but once they learn that it's food they really switch onto it- my adult bristlenose get so impatient they grab me when I put my hand in their tank. I've found cucumber is normally recognised as food more readily than courgette (zucchini?) or lettuce, but it usually takes several attempts. Once you've found something they'll eat, you can then experiment with other veggie-based foods. They should recognise algae wafers, but be aware that they actually contain more fishmeal than algae.