trying homemade loach food with no success

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oddmole
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Sep 09, 2013 2:46 pm

trying homemade loach food with no success

Post by oddmole » Mon Jun 09, 2014 9:24 pm

The tank: 55 gal, 2 70gal powerheads in a manifold with an air pump feeding into the venturi, eheim canister filter with spraybar at surface, a 40gal powerhead at far end (intake) powering tom barr-style co2 diffuser. 48" finnex planted+ light.

Inhabitants: 6-7 zebra danios, 6-7 otocinclus catfish, 3 hillstream loaches, 3 gold-ringed loaches.
plants: 3 jungle val, 4 moneywort, 4 cabomba, a patch of java fern and a now monstrous jungle sword

The tank is now well established, i feed the danios a minnow-sized pellet once a day. Due to the moderate plant growth, co2 and lights i have a very health algae population (luckily found that line between moderate and over-algae) enough to support the oto's and loaches. I have tried wafers, which the danios will feed on for abit, the rest stays in the bottem, never seen the loaches eat it at all, I ve tried par-boiled kale, which everything ignored, and cucumber which was also largely ignored.

In attempting to vary the diet of my loaches i made the recipe on the main forum for frozen loach food (chicken, shrimp, liver, clams, spinache, garlic). This also my loaches are ignoring, the danios grazed a little bit, not much.

The loaches each have their own grazing spots, they never fight, the move about between wriggling on the plants, the glass, and the rocks. They seem comfortably plump and not emancipated in any way, each growing nicely in overall size. They show no competition with the oto's for food.

So finally my questions:
I know there maybe some acclimating time for the new food, how many days should i attempt to feed them the new food before assuming they are not going to eat it?
Should i pull the un-eaten food out of the tank (which will be tough, its solid enough to stay together from the gelatin, but not enough to pick up with anything)?
Or should I just assume the pellet remains and algae are enough and they just have no interest or need for other food?

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