Feeding New Life Spectrum food to Plecos, Panaque and wood

[kkaamm]

I have read some enquiries abt feeding your plecos with NLS food. There are even more concerns abt feeding your Panaque with NLS food. I would like to share some of my views here based on my personal experience.

Since May 2008, I have started to feed all my plecos mainly with NLS food and only feed them some cucumbers once a week or once every 2 weeks. I stopped feeding them any vegetables for over 2 yrs now and feed them exclusively with NLS food (both pellets & wafers). I do not have only a few plecos but have a lot at any time. Sample size is not small at all. I usually feed the smaller ones like my small pseudas, zebras with 0.5mm pellets and feed 1mm/2mm/3mm pellets to the other bigger ones during the day. Most of them will come out to eat and I can see most of my plecos a lot during the day. At nite time, I will put a couple of NLS wafers into each tank before I turn off the nite. All my plecos are growing up fast and they are in good health.

To be continued............................

[kkaamm]

Continued from above

I have also conducted tests on Panaque, wood and NLS food. I have a couple of tanks with different sizes of Panaque inside them but without a sinlge piece of wood there. I keep feeding them only NLS food like all my other plecos. The 8" Panaque L27 that I have posted its pics recently has been living in a 120G tank with no wood inside for close to 3 yrs now and is fed only by NLS. You can tell its conditions by looking at the pics that I posted- a nice looking specimen. Many people may be surprised to hear that Panaque can live in great shape even without a single pc of wood in the tank. However, this is my own personal experience over the years.

Panaque living with wood- a good choice as they have hiding places and something to chew on GOOD set-up
Panaque living without wood- Perfectly ok as long as they have a good diet, with rocks as hiding places


To be continued............

[kkaamm]

Contined from above-

Let me tell u something more abt NLS food. Yes, they are relatively high in proteins, especially my favourite 0.5mm Grow. However, they are all highly digestible and are suitable for all kinds of fish/plecos including carnivore, omnivore & herbivore. I don't know whether you are familiar with the Tropheus from Lake Tanganyika in Africa. These beautiful tropheus are vegetable eaters and they have great difficulty in dealing with high proteins foods. If they eat meaty food, they will die quickly from BLOAT. However, NLS is one of the best food for Tropheus and lots of people including myself are using them to feed their tropheus. NLS is extremely safe for these vegetables eaters and will do equally well for any Panaque pleco.

Based on my personal experience, NLS is one of the best food for plecos of all kinds. You are welcome to visit my office and to see how my plecos respond when I put in some NLS into the tanks. You will see all my plecos are coming out eagerly to eat even during the day!!! Some people are complaining that they can hardly see their beloved plecos, but this is certainly not in my case.

[CanadaPleco]

i use NLS grow in all my pleco tanks as well as NLS thera a. I feed this at least a few times a week and they seem to really like it. other days are a mix of kens food and now repashy super foods. Variety is a very good thing for our fish.

as far as NLS goes i'm pretty sure Kam's prices are about the best around... at least from what I've seen. Thats where mine came from :)

[jvision]

This week is the first week in years that I haven't fed NLS exclusively (except for the odd zucchini), and I totally concur that plecos (vegetarian, omnivorous, and carnivorous) LOVE it! This week, I am trying Repashy, exclusively. From the way I'm going thru it, I may have to cut back a bit, or I'll break the bank on food - the fish LOVE that stuff, too!

[kkaamm]

Tks Rich. Yes, I am selling NLS at prices much much cheaper than LFS, making this hobby more affordable!!!!!

[Yam]

I have played with various methods. Just dried food. Just veggies/raw foods. Both at different %. So it really depends on what the goal is. If the goal is to have the fish at their VERY best, I think feeding the fish 100% with real veggies, raw food (shimp, fish, meal worms) really does bring the best colour, look..etc. The fish look "happy" when they are on that veggie. I actually have seen my panaques jumping for pieces of fish and shrimp even with veggies in front of them. It doesn't make sense to me in the amazon where tons of dead fish, bugs and other sources of protein are always dropping they would pass that up. Clearly, the fish after thousands of years of evolution do eat meat/protein as an add on to their veggie diet. However, after a few months just doing the "organic" way (just real food), it is simply not practical. Yes, the fish are super happy, but my wife and my back said no more. The cleaning required to keep the tank clean is just not practical unless you really have nothing else to do. So I now do I would say 80% dried food (Ken's food, NLS) and 20% veggies (maybe once every 1-2 weeks). I think as long as there is allot of wood (so the panaques can get their fibre/bulk in their stomachs) and the odd veggie I think they are fine. They also get the odd meal worm that my aro drops. Basically, I am saying it depends on the context of your goal/time you can put in.