When I started keeping a few months back I bought some Hikari 'Algae Wafers' as part of my feeding regimen. Noticed that they never seemed that popular in my community tank - only my Pictus showed any real interest and even then he would take just about anything else before them.
Now I have Otto's in two of my tanks and also read that Rainbowfish benefit from eating algae I bought some Aquarian 'Advance Nutrition, Algea Eater sinking Algae Chips' - on the front of the pack it says "for Plecostomus, catfish and ALL algae eaters". Dropped a couple in my tanks that have Otto's in them.
After a couple of days I noticed that the Otto's show no interest at all in these wafers either so I read through the ingredients (and checked the Hikari wafers as well) :
First on the list for both is 'Fish Meal' then various extracts of wheat (germ/bran/flour meal), alfafa, soy, fish oil, krill meal (still looking for any form of algae) then they both list spirulina (at last) and the Aquarian wafers have chlorella, after that they both seem to have the entire contents of a kids chemistry set.
As Otocinclus are almost entirely herbivorous I'm guessing that the presence of so much 'animal derived products' in these algae wafers is what makes them undesireable to them. Zuchini they love!
Has anybody found an algae wafer that is actually more algae than fish/krill meal/oil?
I'm thinking I should harvest algae from my ex-wifes pond and try drying that to make my own algae wafers.
Now I have Otto's in two of my tanks and also read that Rainbowfish benefit from eating algae I bought some Aquarian 'Advance Nutrition, Algea Eater sinking Algae Chips' - on the front of the pack it says "for Plecostomus, catfish and ALL algae eaters". Dropped a couple in my tanks that have Otto's in them.
After a couple of days I noticed that the Otto's show no interest at all in these wafers either so I read through the ingredients (and checked the Hikari wafers as well) :
First on the list for both is 'Fish Meal' then various extracts of wheat (germ/bran/flour meal), alfafa, soy, fish oil, krill meal (still looking for any form of algae) then they both list spirulina (at last) and the Aquarian wafers have chlorella, after that they both seem to have the entire contents of a kids chemistry set.
As Otocinclus are almost entirely herbivorous I'm guessing that the presence of so much 'animal derived products' in these algae wafers is what makes them undesireable to them. Zuchini they love!
Has anybody found an algae wafer that is actually more algae than fish/krill meal/oil?
I'm thinking I should harvest algae from my ex-wifes pond and try drying that to make my own algae wafers.
