Odd hillstream feeding behavior...

[Jim Powers]

Hillstreams will often take a few weeks to adapt to eating the foods we offer them. I even had one that took four months. This, however, is the longest time I have seen one take to adapt.
I purchased a small (less than 1") gastromyzon scitulus almost two and a half years ago. The little guy always grazed algae but never seemed interested in the pellets, bloodworms or brine shrimp that the chenis, H. smithi and G. ocellatus that share his tank readily ate. He even seemed afraid of the bloodworms. Needless to say, the fish has not grown very much in that time.
However, for some reason, today the little fella was down with the chenis greedily stuffing bloodworms in his mouth. I have no idea why it took this fish so long to realize that this was food, but I guess better late than never. I suspect this fish will start putting on weight and length now that it is eating more than just algae.

[Buzzy4p]

yep that weird 2 years to adapt/.

[LES..]

Interesting story there Jim, it gives me some hope for my Sinogastromyzon Wui who we have yet to really see eat much more than the odd nibble of brine shrimp. Unfortunately brine shrimp always seems to break up into the water column before he has any chance to eat more and I'm always a little concerned that we are over feeding to put more in. I'm sure he would eat more if it could be placed in some of the hiding spots he chooses but they are all too inaccessible to place food where it won't get washed away by the current. He does seem to graze the tank quite happily but is very timid, much as the profile suggests. as a result he never seems to go out foraging after we have put food in the tank and just hides away.
Out of curiosity so you feed live blood worms? We have not tried live foods, but there was definitely no interest in frozen blood worms, or any of the other frozen foods we have tried (our other fish have been enjoying the variety though!).

[Jim Powers]

Actually, LES, I use Hikari FROZEN bloodworms, spirulina brine shrimp and mysis shrimp exclusively.
With fish like my S. wui, I take a length of rigid plastic tubing with a 1cm diameter and stuff bloodworms in the end and put my finger over the other end. I put it down into the tank and release the finger, drawing the worms inside. I let them fall back to the end of the tube, put my finger back on and move the tube to where the S. wui hide. I have one who will eat right out of the end of the tube while the other will grab the worms after they come out. I use the same method to distribute the brine and mysis shrimp to low current areas of my tanks for the loaches to find. It works very well but requires a little practice.