Can Plecos Digest Wood?

[RD.]

I have been suggesting to people for years that panaques etc. don't eat wood for it's nutrient value, or for digestibility, they eat it as a secondary action when scraping the biofilm that grows on the wood.

According to the most recent research in this area by Donovan German it appears that I may have been right all along.

Inside the guts of wood-eating catfishes: can they digest wood?

http://german.bio.uci.edu/images/PDF/German (2009) JCPb_gut_print.pdf



The author later responds to his interview on this subject with Practical Fishkeeping Magazine in the following link. http://german.bio.uci.edu/PFK_response.html



While I realise that this info has been out there for a couple of years now, I have only seen it mentioned a couple of odd times, once by myself last year in the pleco dietary sticky, and once by Matt (matubula).


For those that haven't read the links above, cheers!

 

[strollo22]

Very good read. Thanks RD.


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[RD.]

No prob, glad that you found it interesting.

 

[in2cichlids]

Good read. I thought that wood in the tank was more for chewing on (for lack of better term). They are supposed to get the majority of their nutrition from being feed wafers and veggies and fish food.
Thanks for sharing those good links

 

[Recumbent]

Thanks! I always wonder what information I'm missing that someone else takes for granted. I never complain about repeated information (I can just skip over it) because it will probably be helpful to someone (like me).

 

[RD.]

Good read. I thought that wood in the tank was more for chewing on (for lack of better term). They are supposed to get the majority of their nutrition from being feed wafers and veggies and fish food.

Well, according to many hobbyists, including a number of people on this forum, certain plecos such as panaques must have wood as part of their diet. Some even believe that elements such as lignin is an essential nutrient in their natural diet. I believe that Donovan German et al have proven otherwise.

Below is an excerpt from the Pleco Dietary sticky .....

*As stated above "Most Plecs are very opportunistic Omnivores", but some are primarily carnivore (e.g. Zebras etc), some vegetarian and others (e.g. Panaque etc) require wood (Yes, wood!) in their diet to survive.

Yet I know those that have kept panaques for years with no wood in their tanks, and no noticeable health issues of any kind. I know others with 12"+ Royal Panaques, that have never fed a single vegetable since their panaques were tiny juvies. These are massive plecos, with heads the size of my wrist, all grown out on commercial pellets & wafers.

While sucking/chewing on wood is a natural feeding behaviour, I do not believe that any species of pleco actually requires wood as part of their diet.

 

[robnin2002]

nice. i always thought my blue eye just needed wood. he would eat other stuff like bloodworms and massivore pellets, but i thought i was just spoiling him, thanks for the article

 

[RD.]

No problem, glad to help.

 

[ElectricBlueSeanBurch]

Just curious, what's your stance on a meaty diet with panaque species?

 

[RD.]

My stance is that there are very few fish that are true obligatory herbivores, and that all plecos require the same amino acids (protein) & fatty acids that other freshwater species of fish require, just in lesser quantities.

As previously stated:

I know others with 12"+ Royal Panaques, that have never fed a single vegetable since their panaques were tiny juvies. These are massive plecos, with heads the size of my fist, all grown out on commercial pellets & wafers.

For decades Tropheus keepers felt that due to the intestinal length & long digestive process in that species, it should only be fed low protein "green" food, and that any amount of animal based protein could cause bloat. Yet science has proven that in captive bred species of Tropheus the intestinal length can be half of what's found in wild specimens.

"Intestinal prolongation, although indicative of specialization on diets with low nutritional value, such as those of epilithic algae and detritus, has been shown to be highly plastic (Sturmbauer et al.1992). In Tropheus moorii the intestinal length of domestic fish measured only 50% of the length found in wild individuals (Sturmbauer et al. 1992)."

A more recent study that was published in 2009 demonstrates just how great intestinal plasticity can be in response to the diet quality of various species of fish found in Lake Tanganyika.

http://limnology.wisc.edu/personnel..._Functional-Ecology-LT-cichlid-gut-length.pdf


The above paper clearly demonstrates just how adaptive some species of fish can be when it comes to their diet. As long as one feeds a quality food, diet will generally be a non issue, and will not cause any type of major gastrointestinal stress. Most fish were born to adapt.


With panaque species, I would feed the same pellet/wafer food as the rest of my fish, just in smaller quantities.