Feeding Suckermouth catfish?

[Wellsted]

First I’d like to thank Colin, Andy and the others for their great advice on solving my aeration concerns. This issue corrected, I have another question.

I have five different sucker fish. One is a tiny little reddish brown fellow, three are little finger sized chaps and ‘Tank’ is a larger catfish about a hand width.

Tank is a new comer - purchased this past weekend.

I have no concerns about the other sucker catfish as they have been with me for months and seem to do well feeding off the algae and whatever else in the aquarium. They seem happy and relaxed.

Tank is still very shy and hasn’t gotten around to exploring the aquarium. I made him a nice new soft sand bed under a false cave so he can hide there. He/she hasn’t yet taken up accommodations.

Given his larger size I’ve introduced algae tablets into the aquarium because I thought he would need more sustenance than his smaller cousins.

However Tank doesn’t seem to be interested. Should I be concerned or will he settle and simply become ‘hungry’ enough to start feeding more actively.

Note that the aquarium has a number of their low value fish, including angels, guppies (want to experiment with breeding sometime) neons and a bunch of colourful species. Everyone seems to be getting along fine, and better now because there are no longer micro bubbles.

Any advice welcomed.

Thanks

Mike

 

[Wellsted]

Picture of Tank. Color not good but actually aquarium is super clean - I left a little algae on the side for him to try.

 

[Colin_T]

Healthy fish can go for weeks or even months without food so it's unlikely to starve in the next few days. If there is algae in the tank, the fish will graze on that at night, or maybe even during the day. Have some driftwood in the tank and they graze on that too. Keep offering small amounts of food and eventually the fish might try it.

Some wild caught plecos won't touch dry foods so just encourage algae to grow on the back and sides of the tank and have driftwood, and the fish can try other foods if it wants to.

 

[Andy Sager]

Picture of Tank. Color not good but actually aquarium is super clean - I left a little algae on the side for him to try.

You want to get the actual names ( Latin or L number) of the fish so that you can research their dietary needs before purchase. Some plecos are meat eaters, some are algae eaters and some need wood as part of their diets. There is no "one size fits all" food for all plecos.
Planetcatfish.com is a good source of catfish information.

 

[Wellsted]

Thanks Colin. Thanks Andy