Loaches Online Forum

For whatever reason while making lunch yesterday I put a small piece of cooked shrimp into my 125. The loaches went after it was like it was candy!! Sure they love bloodworms and brine shrimp, but "real" shrimp made them go bonkers! What they didn't eat I removed that night, but I've never seen a show quite like that!

I guess my question is should I only feed this as a treat? Should they just be getting flakes as their predominant diet?

It's good to offer treats. I made a "seafood mix" of several kinds of raw fresh seafood (clams, scallops, shrimp, fish etc) for my young discus & shared with my loaches too. I did lose a young clown once the day after feeding the mix, although I was very careful to remove uneaten food, I did wonder if the was part of the reason.

I'd say be careful, cooked shrimp is easy to feed but harder to remove uneaten bits. & what seems a small amount needs more effort by the fish to eat it. I now try new foods just before a water change, banana & broccoli were especially messy, lol, but they did like it. With cooked or raw shrimp I put it on a skewer or fork but bits can fly all around the tank & can spike ammonia levels. Think about how much wafer or tablet food they eat at a feeding & remember there's usually fillers in commercial foods.

I love spoiling my fish with food treats but I'm not a good water quality tester so I tend to go with small amounts & vacuuming, lessons learned.

I'm really bad about feeding veggies, I should look into that more I guess..

My striatas & histrionicas were not as interested in veggies (or fruit) as clowns. My best trick for veg is to make small slits in a slice of zucchini & push pellets or wafer bits in them. I feel that some veggies are almost more like toys rather than a true food. But offering them gives the loaches something new to explore & it's fun!

I think that's where my thinking is wrong. Seems like clowns love veggies and that is why I think I've giving too much meat to my loaches. No clowns in my tank. I feed Omega One flakes in the morning but in the evening I feed brine shrimp and/or bloodworms. Algae wafers just seems to get pecked at, but not devoured like the meatier foods.

I see the word "treat" used often when talking about loaches and feeding high protien foods. But since my loaches aren't clowns I guess it's their normal diet to have high protein meals? It's not a treat, just normal chow for them right?

I should add, since I've started my 125 all my loaches are doing awesome. Still in the market though for adding some new tank mates

I know this is a bit late, but I should give my 2 cents. I have 6 clown loaches, and I also feed them seafood. However, I NEVER remove uneaten food (they always finish it) and I don't feed mine veggies/algae wafers, only seafood, worms, snails, and carnivore pellets. They have been doing very well and none of these foods soil the tank like veggies do.

I don't offer raw vegetables to my Clown Loaches in order to keep up my water quality. However, vegetable foods I have recently introduced include New Life Spectrum Algae Max Wafer and Northfin Kelp Wafers and they eat these.

I have also started feeding a lot of freeze dried krill after soaking it in boiling water and left to cool so it sinks. Freeze dried Gammarus is also good and very cheap. Some shrimp have a sharp pointed rostrum so I don't feed these.

My Clown Loaches also never leave any food uneaten. I am careful not to overfeed and surprised how little they really need.

I take pre-cooked peeled frozen shrimp and cut it with a steak knife on a teacup plate. Then dice it into smaller bits. By the time I get to the tank its mostly unthawed.

No rostrum to worry about

I thought you were going to say that by the time you get to the tank its been eaten!

I used to feed mine live river shrimp but stopped as it seemed a bit macabre. But they went nuts for it. They need to be big enough to eat them obviously.