Getting food to sink

T

tuvok

AC Members
Dec 16, 2004
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I would like to offer a greater variety of food to my corydoras in the form of flake food and freeze dried tubifex or blood worms. The problem I have been having so far is being able to get this stuff to sink reliably and quickly enough that I can observe my fish eating. With the sinking pellets I usually just drop them in the feeding area of my tank and keep an eye out to make sure the fish eat everything, however, even when flake food or tubifex cubes are pre-soaked they take a while to sink and get moved around by the filter current so that they are scattered all over the bottom of the tank making it difficult to know if it has all been eaten. One theory I have is that I am not soaking the food long enough, my concern though is that if I soak for too long the food may go bad. Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing? Any advice would be welcome.
 
If you can't tie the food to a small stone, use a length of PVC or similar plastic pipe that's slightly longer than the water is deep, and stand it vertically in the tank. Then place the food in the top of the pipe. It will sink through the pipe to the bottom, uneffected by water motion. Gently pull the pipe out, and the food will be lying on the substrate.

A turkey baster is great for spot-feeding as well, I use one to get blood worms to my corys before the danios eat them all.
 
Raskolnikov said:
use a length of PVC or similar plastic pipe that's slightly longer than the water is deep, and stand it vertically in the tank. Then place the food in the top of the pipe. It will sink through the pipe to the bottom, uneffected by water motion. Gently pull the pipe out, and the food will be lying on the substrate.
Click to expand...

Worked like a charm, thanks Raskolnikov.
 
I have the opposite problem! I have hatchets and some ghost (glass) catfish and when I add frozen (thawed) blood worms, they sink so fast, they don't all get eaten and the fish don't seem to search the bottom for more!

Then I have a tank cleaning issue getting rid of the left overs.

Should I abandon the frozen ones and go for freeze dried - do those float longer?

THANKS! :dive2:
 
carriebourdeau said:
Should I abandon the frozen ones and go for freeze dried - do those float longer?
Click to expand...

I feed both for exactly that reason. The freeze dried kind floats longer, which is good for the fish who're shy.
 
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