Bristlenose pleco.

[Jmrwiggly]

I just bought my first bristlenose pleco last week. I keep hearing about feeding them zucchini and other veggies but not how often.

 

[jessipanda]

I feed ours algae wafers and/or shrimp pellets 3-5 nights a week, then the day before a water change he gets his veggie--usually a slice of zucchini, half a brussel sprout, or a piece of spinach. If anything is left in the morning, it gets sucked up the vac during the water change and no one gets fed that day. He also eats any of the leftover food from the other fish (flakes, frozen worms/larvae/brine shrimp, etc). Any veggies I have for him are kept frozen so they last awhile and blanched to thaw and allow them to sink.

BTW, he's my favorite (and oldest) fish. He LOVES brussel sprouts so he helped me understand why they exist! Lol ?

 

[Laeris]

BTW, he's my favorite (and oldest) fish. He LOVES brussel sprouts so he helped me understand why they exist! Lol ��

Because they're delicious broiled with a brush of fresh minced garlic in olive oil!

+1 on blanched zucchini 1-3xweek. In case you're unfamiliar with the process, add to boiling water for a couple of minutes, then remove and put in ice water which stops it cooking immediately and cools it off so it's safe to touch. Doing it this way softens it without much altering the nutritional content in the way extended boiling might do.

I drop Ken's wafers for the loaches and cories daily, the pleco also gets in on it

 

[ghyti]

Cut a zucchini in half cross wise. Cut each half in half long wise. Rubberband the chunk to a rock. drop it in the tank just before lights out at night. The next night scoop the remains out with a net and repeat. Adjust the size of the zucchini chunk depending on how much they eat in 24 hrs. You would be surprised how much zucchini a bristlenose eats in every day.

 

[dm76]

Mine is about 6 years old now and I just feed him algae tablets daily and he and all the other bottom feeders eat those. I do give him zucchini in the summer once in awhile when I have them for dinner and just blanch them as described above. I have one of those suction cup clips and those do a good job to keep it from floating around. He spends most of the time laying under a piece of driftwood or stuck to the glass somewhere. Ugly as sin but a really cool fish!

 

[Swampman]

Bristle nose Plecos What a fish. I have a breeding pair. There is babies at least once a month. Sometimes twice. The cool thing about them is the female lays eggs in a small cave that I bought for them. The male stays in the cave and fans the eggs. When hatch he keeps them the cave until he feels safe for them to be released. My female is the brown color while the male is albino color. The babies are either brown, albino or a cross. The cross one are cool looking. Great marks on them.. I feed the adults veg and pellet food. The babies are in a separate tank. They get fresh vegs 3x week. They will eat the pellet or wafer food. They area lot of fun.

 

[Jmrwiggly]

Thanks for the info everyone. Sorry for not replying sooner its been busy around here.

 

[Jmrwiggly]

I agree with you dm76. I asked the kid at the LFS if there is a pleco that didn't get 20 inches. This is how I have a BN now. Didn't know how UGLY they were until I looked them up. I was tired of the waste with the common I had it was around 13 inches.