inari

Inari is my baby my fat little baby who can't seem to leave the cory or shrimp food the heck alone any ideas i've tried to feed them when he isn't looking like when he is concentrating on me withhis food...open to any ideas thanx

~Inari

chickadee

Well I got desperate with Alexander here a couple weeks ago as he was eating everything that hit the water, snail food, oto food, betta food, peas, you name it. So I took an algae wafer and soaked it in some (a couple tablespoons) of dechlorinated water and let it go to powder. Then I got an eyedropper and took the liquid and put as much in the eyedropper as it would hold. Then I put my hand with the eyedropper as far into toward the bottom back corner of the tank as I could get and squirted the food out. It made a momentary mess in the water but the powdered food settled fast and all over the gravel in the back of the tank. The otos and snail can eat it that way and the naughty little Alexander cannot so that took care of that for the moment.

Since then I have now gotten sponge filters for all of my tanks and the sponge filter sits within a half inch of the back wall of the tank. I just drop the wafer back there and Alex won't go there so the Otos fit there fine and the food is Alex-free and safe. He still loves the snail food but the snail is usually right there to eat it so he doesn't fight with him much.

Good luck. I hadn't heard from you for a while and was afraid you had had a disaster of some sort. Glad to have you back.

Rose

inari

nope sorry i've been upgrading my tank when i have some time off from school sorry to worry you anyway I tried to to put the food under my air stone becuase inari hates well past tense hated the thing so i tried to put the cory food under it so that the cories could find it and eat it and inari would stay away from it...well as soon as Inari realized it was food he sucked it up and grabbed... so that is what happened to that I'll try the eye dropper thing it might work i'll give it a whirrle thanx rose

~Inari

chickadee

He will have a hard time picking the powder up off the gravel for sure and the cories can do it easy and so can the shrimp. That is what scavengers do is pick stuff up off the gravel. It will be okay.

Rose

inari

What about algea eaters can they pick up 'dust' from the rocks? .... .... .... wait i don't have to worry about that with the new plant bulb i got i've had an algea burst and sticky loves it...until my finacee takes a pic with her flash on he hasn't come out for the last two days because of her the flash scared the out of him...literally!!

lol

~Inari

chickadee

Yes when the algae is off of the plant bulb, Sticky will love the "powder". It is after all just an algae wafer that has been soaked up and made into a liquid and spread on the floor of the tank. You are only going to want to do this a couple times a week as it does take them a while to eat a whole wafers worth of algae and you want them to keep the tank clean too. Otherwise the stuff will start to grow.

Rose

inari

wait a sec so the algea wafers can cause green algea to grow in my tank again? i did not realize that i've been getting green algea and didn't know that was why. th reason I've been throwing in the occational algea wafer is 'cause the cories will swim after it and but heads and chase my shrimps around the tank it is rather funny...the shrimp get their share don't worry they have pellets that they scarf down as soon as they are soft enough

0morrokh

No, I think what she is saying is that if they are always eating algae wafers, they will neglect to eat the algae so it will start to take over. By only feeding them a few times a week, they will have to eat the algae too.

chickadee

Well actually what I am saying is both. First and most important, the reason you get fish like otos and cories and other catfish and algae eaters is usually to help keep the algae in the tank down and all tanks have it whether it is enough to be noticeable or not. If we feed them the commercial food all the time they are going to say to themselves, "why are we working so hard cleaning up all this junk, when the old gal is just handing out free food?" So only give the algae wafers a couple times a week at the most so they have to forage for algae in the tank the rest of the time.

Next and do not let this scare you because I am not saying that algae wafers cause algae, if you overfeed and they do not eat the food for DAYS it will start to grow a really scummy looking stuff on it that is really gross mucus type. You DO NOT want that so try only giving a half or quarter wafer unless they clean it up pretty fast. Otherwise, that stuff is no fun to clean up as it does not vacuum easily.

Rose

inari

lol ic that is a good point...I used to throw like less than 1/8 in every few days but this was when inari was eatting everything that hit the water...tho it did help him slightly to pass some food out of his over stuffed system. The peas work even better, anyway i appreciate it and i know this is miss placed but if a pleco stays in one place like under a rock for a long period of time?? jw i know its miss placed but talking about sticky made me think of it
thanx

Inari

poefox

The question is too, what do they like that he doesn't? I feed my corys flake food once a day now and Rusty never touches the stuff. He loves those pellets but I realized part of his aggression is that not being a bottom feeder he is not as good at finding them, so he shadows the corys then pounces on them.

inari

I wish that were the case with Inari the little snot loves anything that enters the tank, I once took some spinach for Sticky from the cafe (hehehehe i know i'm not supposed to but i did) and he ate that too tho i'm not entirely sure that he even liked but he ate it anyway so that is where my problem lies. when i first got the cories i tried the flakes but he devoured all of them b4 i could get them to sink so I might just try the eye dropper

~Inari