tube feeding?

[Catalina]

i have two, young cory catfish sharing my ten gallon tank with a dwarf gourami. when i feed the fish in the tank, i usually sprinkle just a little bit of food on the surface of the water which pighead (the gourami) wolfs up in a couple of minutes, and then put some flakes in the stream of my overflow filter, so that they are carried down to the bottom. the catfish eat these and spend a lot of time searching through the gravel for food. i have tried feeding them a few freeze dried blood worms, but the gourami always manages to find and eat all of those before any of them have had time to sink to the bottom, so the cories aren't able to eat any. i read something somewhere about feeding bottom feeders in a community tank with a tube. i was wondering exactly how to do this so that the blood worms would get carried to the bottom. should i place the tube in the downward flowing stream of the filter? where can i find a tube that would work well? thanks in advance for your help. this site is so great.

 

[jackie]

hi,. i havent heard of a feeder tube i am afraid,i usually buy frozen bloodworm for mine, it usually finds its way to the bottom pretty quickly and they all get a share then, i can stock up on it when i go to the lfs.do you feed your corys any sinking food for bottom feeders? pebbles

 

[loganj]

I use a piece of acrylic tubing for an undergravel filter uplift. Put the frozen bloodworms in it and let them sink to the bottom. The corys will go nuts over them. Hikari makes some sinking pellets that my corys like as well.

 

[Catalina]

thanks! both of you mentioned frozen blood worms. i take it these are different than freeze dried? do you guys recommend that i supplement my corys' diet with sinking pellets? they do seem to get their share of flake food, and are doing me a huge favor by going through the tank and sucking it up. i am going to make sure that they get some bloodworms, though. i think they did today when i distracted the gourami with flake food and put the worms in the stream of the filter current. they stilll took a while to sink though.

 

[jackie]

hi catalina , i would suggest you get some sinking food of some sort,i usually cut back a little on the flake and give some sinking wafers or pellets.they usually all share an algea wafer each night ,all my fish eat the sinking food and they have fun with the algea wafer , its quite big and they all nibble together around the edges. the frozen bloodworm comes in packs of little cubes, its almost appears 'live' i defrost mine first ,you can also get other frozen blocks as well ,i'm lucky i have a large fish store only 20 mins away, not much you cant get there,...hope you can get some bloodworm, jackie

 

[Bearfan]

Frozen bloodworms are a favorite of many cats. I personally buy the Hikari for my shovel-nosed cat and my porthole cats. It comes in a two-pack of blocks and I can just break off as much as I need. I don't personally like the cubed variety as it limits me to feeding size (which is too much for one of my tanks). I don't defrost it so it does sink fairly fast. If you do defrost it, you will lose most of it to your top and mid dwellers.

I also use sinking dried shrimp pellets, but they don't go over as well as the bloodworms.