i have a question for someone out there familiar with red belly pacu fish... my 2 yr old pacu has been eating her fave food raw brazil nuts (without shell) her whole life (among other foods as well) well 2 days ago she ate 4 nuts.. that night her tank was FILLED with little pieces and bits of nuts... floating everywhere and clogging all filtre in tank tubes... it appeared she was pooping them and possibly regurgitating them.... i did a water change and cleaned the filtres of the debris... once more tonite i find the same thing....(she hasnt been fed any thing since the 2 days ago) i cleaned again and am baffled at this experience... she isnt acting sick.. at first i worried she had a blockage and was just regurgitating them...but i saw her actually poop some out... has anyone else ever encountered this sort of thing???
pacu regurgitating brazil nuts?
- Thread starter BigFishMum
- Start date
Feeding a fish nuts sounds wrong to me, so idk. Keep that water clean though to help keep things stable.
well day 3.... almost no nut debris in tank today... so far soo good,, she seems healthy so far... i may wait til tonite to give her some peas to eat... may hold off on the brazil nuts for another day or so..
We used to give our pacu almonds. Unfortunately, they inhaled them whole without bothering to chew first. I was afraid that our plumbing would get fouled up, so gave up the almonds a long time ago. Our pacus get fed pellets. If they get fed anything else, it is strictly for our amusement. Their water gets fouled so badly when we give them other stuff. Here's old video of them (when they were much smaller) eating slices of potatoes. The water looks nasty with all their food debris. We have great mechanical filtration that eventually clears the debris, but I hate when the water gets full of junk....so it's pellets for them.
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i didnt think they would get enuff of the nutrients and proteins they needed from a strictly pelleted diet... what do you use for them and how long now have they been on this one food source??
i used to own four red bellied pacu and i would feed them pieces of brazil nuts but in the end it seemed i turned them into carnivores and they would mainly eat frozen silversides and hikari pellets and they would attack anything small and silver in the tank. they got bright red bellies but i moved them to a pond and they died while cleaning it
They eat pond pellets. I compared the ingredients to cichlid pellets--they were basically the same stuff. We've had the pacu 6 1/2 years. They were about 15" when my husband picked them up at a moving away yard sale. They grew up on a diet of pond pellets. Any other food we give them fouls the water....except for grapes which they swallow whole. They are extremely messy eaters, and the water looks nasty when they are done. Once I gave them unlimited watermelon which they loved---we ended up with an ammonia spike. Their pellet diet has not stunted their growth, as they are getting longer, broader and taller all the time. Here's another very old video showing nasty water after the pacu had eaten broccoli.
The bottom line for me, is that all the uneaten food waste eventually translates into increased nitrates, i.e., more work for us doing water changes to lower the nitrates. I don't even like to look at the water when it looks all foul and nasty.