food

[turtle lover]

My clown loaches eat rarely. My question is how do you make it more likely for it to eat.

[Diana]

Fish have certain favorite foods. Sometimes they will refuse to eat lower quality foods.

Best foods for many Loaches include snails, worms and other things that come from lower in the water, and might have lived buried in the substrate. Loaches are made for digging in the mud, sand or fine gravel to find their meals.

Overall I find most fish will prefer foods that are closer to live, natural foods.

Many Loaches love live snails. My clown Loaches will devour garden snails (1" diameter shells), pond snails and others.

All my fish love the frozen foods such as blood worms, brine shrimp and many others.

A little lower, but still pretty high on their favorites are the many freeze-dried foods like brine shrimp, daphnia and pretty much all the things that are also available frozen.

High quality dry foods, various pellets, wafers and flakes are about the lowest ranking foods that I offer my fish, and they all like these, too. Some fish have their favorites.
Avoid foods with fish meal and grains.
Look for whole fish and shellfish, spirulina algae and other good things.
I feed Almost Natural Tropical Fish Food.
Other good ones are Omega One and New Life Spectrum.

The worst are foods that are usually available in the pet section of grocery stores.

Many fish seem to like the flavor of garlic. crush and mince a clove and soak the food in it. Then feed the minced/crushed garlic as well as the food. I have seen fish skip the frozen bloodworms to eat the garlic!

I also make my own frozen food, based on Martin's recipe. I will see if I can find a link. Yup... here it is!

http://forums.loaches.com/viewtopic.php?t=16732