Loaches Love Oranges!!

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LoachOrgy
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Loaches Love Oranges!!

Post by LoachOrgy » Thu Jan 18, 2007 5:10 pm

Out of any other food, fruit, worms, shrimp or anything I have fed the loaches, they love oranges the most?

What do your loaches love the most? I am trying to get some ideas to vary their diets every few weeks.

Currently I feed them this. (4 loaches, one pleco, green cory, three gold fish, one)

1) Dried shrimp pellets that sink to the bottom on a daily basis.
http://www.petsmart.com/media/ps/images ... _12a53.jpg

2) mix in flakes every few days
3) cucumber every two days sometimes frozen squash(pleco tears this up)
4) oranges once a week for a treat. if you feed them oranges too often it clogs your filter quite a bit with pulp
5) thera +A New LIfe Spectrum anti parasitic fish food.
http://everythingaquatic.ca/imagemagic. ... =prod_info
have these pellets that say they are medicated and formulated for loaches. It has a loach on the cover and has a blue lid. these pellets sink to the bottom. this is their favorite sinking food. they love these pellets bc they go between the rocks and dig for them in order to eath them.
Non-medicated Anti-Parasitic 1 mm sinking pellets. Improves your fishies colors without hormones or artificial color enhancers. Loaded with easily digestible krill and herring meal. Balanced daily diet for all fresh and marine fish. Boosts immune system to repel parasites.

This food is great for feeding to reef tanks you will see most every thing in the tank will eat this food I have seen invertibrates such as anemones, corals, and shrimp eat spectrum foods!



6) one frozen shrimp cube and two frozen blood worm cubes on the weekends(both days)
7) algae wafers[/url]

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brett_fishman
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Post by brett_fishman » Thu Jan 18, 2007 7:31 pm

i feed my fish (2 pearl gouramis, 1 platy and 1 yoyo loach) these foods:
Sinking Shrimp Pellets (broken in half)
Good Quality Flake
Tubiflex Cubes

i am going to get some Freeze-dried Blood Worms soon for the loachie!!

and thats it, i usually feed the flake food 3x a day, and give 4-6 halfed shrimp pellets daily...then some small chunks of tubiflex for a treat!!

-brett.
10g Tank - 1 Male Betta
70g Tank - 2 Pearl Gouramis 10 Harlequin Rasboras 4 Neon Tetras 2 SAEs 1 Swordtail

worldrallynut
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Post by worldrallynut » Thu Jan 18, 2007 8:31 pm

All of my tanks seemed to love the leftover red snapper tonight:)
Jeremy

Mark in Vancouver
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Post by Mark in Vancouver » Thu Jan 18, 2007 8:34 pm

I would be interested to see how introducing oranges to the tank affects the pH - concerned, actually. Have you done any monitoring of this?
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mikev
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Post by mikev » Thu Jan 18, 2007 10:16 pm

There may be more than one reason to be concerned.

1. The global pH change.

2. The local pH change: citric acid inside orange will be released as the fish eats it (well, assuming that a fish would eat it...)

3. citric acid happens to have antibacterial properties and in fact used in some cleaning products. May not be very biofilter-friendly.

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shazam26
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Post by shazam26 » Thu Jan 18, 2007 11:16 pm

I feed my clowns a variety of things: Tubifex worms, blood worms, sinking wafers, cucumber (mine are not very partial to cucumber), a vitamin enriched sinking pellet, fresh shrimp, and brine shrimp.
Their favorites are of course bloodworms, and the sinking wafers.

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LoachOrgy
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Post by LoachOrgy » Thu Jan 18, 2007 11:20 pm

i think one orange a week is ok. but i think anything more than that would throw the ph out of wack. one day i fed them oranges 3 days in a row and the tank turned sort of a cloudy lemonade looking color. i changed half the water. of course this could have been the gold fish secreting its nasties into the water. the pulp gets all over and it jams your filters. you will have to clean because it gets really grimy. seriously though, oranges are loach crack!

Mark in Vancouver
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Post by Mark in Vancouver » Thu Jan 18, 2007 11:47 pm

They are known to like some fruit in the diet. But try watermelon or something less citrus in nature. Citrus fruits are incredibly high in acid. I would absolutely avoid putting any part of the rind in the tank, as the acids are released in oils that would be hard to get rid of.
Your vantage point determines what you can see.

wasserscheu
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Post by wasserscheu » Fri Jan 19, 2007 8:18 am

mikev wrote:There may be more than one reason to be concerned.

...

3. citric acid happens to have antibacterial properties and in fact used in some cleaning products. May not be very biofilter-friendly.
Hi Mike,

I´m also somewhat concerned about the c.acid concentration in the fish´s mouth. I even don´t like certain candys, as I have the feeling the containing c.acid hurts my gum (makes it rough).

Regarding the biofilter though, there is a common application to add some (not much!) c.acid to set free the captured iron (and others) in the bio-filter sludge. There are recepies for Iron feritilezers that contain some c.acid. That keeps the iron from reacting right away (and not eatable anymore by plants) due to oxygen (avoid Fe3, or so...)

bevans
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Post by bevans » Fri Jan 19, 2007 8:18 pm

I was in Petsmart the other day and noticed that they had put orange slices, rind and all, in each of their goldfish tanks. When I asked the girl, she said they gave each tank a piece of orange every day and left it in for a couple of hours. They certainly seemed to be popular-25-30 goldfish in each tank chowing down for all they were worth. So I fed mine a section of tangerine one day and they did seem to appreciate it, though I left it in too long and it made the water cloudy. That cleared up after I removed it. The mystery snails also liked it. I'm going to try it again with an orange section and try not to forget about taking it out this time...

BTB I tried the blanched cucumber thing tonight-put it in an hour ago. No loach action, though-the red-tailed shark has apparently decided that it is HIS cucumber. He's not that interested in eating it, he's just chasing everyone off. I'm going to leave it in overnight and see if the kuhlis come out to nibble after dark.
Brenda

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LoachOrgy
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Post by LoachOrgy » Fri Jan 19, 2007 9:14 pm

man i miss my rainbow shark. he was an awesome fish. so you have some red tail sharks and loaches side by side? i used to have them and it seemed that they were in love...

yeah actually i saw them feeding the fish oranges at petsmart like that with their little fish clips. so i tried it and it works like a charm. if you look at my other post its called my crazy loaches it has pics of my tank. if you look, you can see the orange or food clips that i have. i will tell ya, it makes feeding so much easier. and the loaches will dance and take turns eating it off the clip.


my loaches love cucumber and really tear into it but they won't eat it if you watch. you have to sneak up on them. lol...


and the water does cloud up sometimes especially if you do it two days in a row. usually then i will take out the orange clear the pulp and clean the tank or do a partial water change.


i do have a ph tester and i tried testing the ph of the tank and it tested fine. but i am no pro. i would love to have a pro do some tests or know a bit more info bc if it does in fact destabilize the water i would like to know so i stop feeding them orange. its just they go crazy like its mothers milk!

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Wendie
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Post by Wendie » Sat Jan 20, 2007 6:59 am

Most of my loaches seem to enjoy the cukes and squash. It merely hits the water when the BN and plecos are on it. The loaches work their way in later in the day. They won't eat it immediately. I have not seen the Striatra touch it though nor have I tried it with the Rosy Loaches.

bevans
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Post by bevans » Sat Jan 20, 2007 7:18 am

LoachOrgy wrote:
man i miss my rainbow shark. he was an awesome fish. so you have some red tail sharks and loaches side by side? i used to have them and it seemed that they were in love...
Just the one red-tail and he's become such a bully that I'm thinking he needs a new home. Really chases the golden algae eater-he absolutely hates that fish. I think it's because the algae eater's shape is similar enough that he considers him a rival. He also doesn't like my red dalmation sailfin mollie male, who is really more yellow than red. Seems to have a thing about yellow fish.

He leaves the kuhlis alone, as a rule. Doesn't seem to think they're fish. Chases everyone else from time to time.

My 55 gal. has the following:

1 red tailed shark
1 pair sailfin mollies
1 silver male lyretail mollie
6 adolescent mollies from my first batch of fry
2 pairs fancy guppies
1 pair black swords
1 tuxedo lyretail female sword (who apparently has melanoma on her tail)
1 cory cat of indeterminate species
1 golden algae eater
3 striped kuhlis (1 I think is myersi, 2 p. kuhli)
2 black kuhlis

Stoppping there. I'm going to find a home for the odd male mollie as well as one pair of the guppies, and the baby mollies are going to the lfs as soon as they get big enough. But there are more right behind them...

If I could figure out the species of my cory cat, I'd get him a couple of friends after the other fish go. But none of the c-number pictures on catfish planet look like him. He has a very high dorsal fin and some greyish black spots on his spine.

Back to loaches here... :D I don't think they ate anything off the cucumber at all, though the other fish nibbled on it some. The swords particularly seemed to like it. Guess it's back to algae wafers. Mine are eating the algae wafers, a couple of different flake foods (one is for herbivores-they seem to like that one best), hikari sinking wafers (highly popular!), hikari sinking carnivore wafers, freeze-dried brine shrimp and algae wafers. I feed the tank freeze-dried blood worms and tubifex, but I honestly don't think much of that gets down to the lower levels to the loaches. It's taken me about three months to settle on fish food that seems to work for everybody-I got one can of a soft wafer tropical food that no one would eat.

They're all fat and sassy, so I must be doing something right. The tiny kuhli is still by himself with the guppies and Stubby the albino cory in the 10 gal. I can't see that he's gaining any weight, but he's not losing it either. He seems very lively. The guppies get Hikari fancy guppy food (pretty high octane stuff, judging from the protein percentage) and blood worms and brine shrimp, but I also throw one sinking wafer a day in there for him and the cory cat. The wafers keep disappearing totally by the time I come home, which is pretty impressive.
Brenda

Penguin
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Post by Penguin » Sat Jan 20, 2007 9:26 am

My loach and pleco's favourite food is courgette/ zuchini, and broccoli (but they make such a mess with the broccoli, I have to hoover and clean the filter, so they don't get that often) . They don't really like cucumber. I have heard they like earthworm, and it is raining today, so I might go to the park and see if I can dig one up.
Bye:
Penguin

- 120 litre tank at home: 1 fantail goldfish, 3 weather loaches.
- 20 litre tank at the office: 1 male veil-tail betta, 4 amano shrimp.

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LoachOrgy
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Post by LoachOrgy » Sat Jan 20, 2007 10:57 am

bevans,

this may help figure out your cat. i found this store that has a little description of a few cories. i will tell ya, these 4 emerald green cories i bought are having a hayday in my tank. they love the current and waterfall so much they swim up and down the tank like there is no tommorow. they ride the jetstream like surfer turtles.lol

http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/scat ... CatId=1161

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