Feeding Ropefish

[Evolution]

Last night I set up an old 125 as a display. I put in about one hundred small crypts as fore-ground plants and a few other species as background plants. I'm going to wait a few weeks before I start adding the fish to allow the plants to take root. I put laterite under the sand bed. This is going to be an African display, however none of the fish are going to be from the rift valley. One species that I am going to keep in there is E. calabaricus; the Ropefish.

My concern is feeding them, six of them. I know once they are established they do well on sinking pellets and frozen thawed. However, I'll be adding 6 Synodontis sp., 12 - 18 congo tetras, 2 pairs of some kind of West African cichlid, probably Nanochromis sp. and Pelvicachromis sp, an elephant nose or two and a pair of African butterflies. Compation for food will be relatively high and I will not be at the tank everyday to target feed. I'm putting on the tank three dependable automatic feeders for feeding small quanties of high quality sinking and floating pelleted foods through out the day.

Ropefish are such slow eaters that I'm concerned the Synos will have the sinking pellets hoovered before the ropefish will even get to the feeding stations. An idea is to seed the tank with trumpet snails, which I did last night. I put them in because I wanted them to keep the sand churned and eat off any ditritus and dead roots. Then I wondered, will the ropefish eat trumpet snails? If they do then this would make for an excellent way to supplement the Ropefishes diet and keep the trumpet snail population down to a managible, sustainable size.

Does anyone know if Ropefish eat snails? Trumpets specifically? Also, has anyone witnessed any Polyterus sp. eating snails?

Will

[pagani]

Floating tubifex cubes, feed them after the pellets. The ropefish will go crazy for them.

[Evolution]

Ropefish eating off the surface? And don't you find tubifex worms in the cubes rather small? What brand do you use?

[BooUrns!]

I've had a school of rope fish for a few years now and they eat from the surface. They're in a 45g long that is heavily planted with vals and star grass. They seem to like being able to work their way through the dense plants. For simplicity, we feed them small floating pellets which are usually given to goldfish/koi. They don't complain and aren't shy around feeding time. If I remember correctly, they didn't feed for the first few weeks when I first got them. I used cubes of tubifex to get them interested in surface feeding.

Edited August 6, 2010 by BooUrns!

[Bang74]

I used to feed mine frozen beef heart for a treat, thin shaved directly into the tank and all my fish went crazy for it.