Proper Feeding Of Plecos

Question
Hello Nicole:
I have a 5 inch Pleco and a 10 inch Pleco in a 40 gallon tank.  I have been feeding them 2 times a day with Warley or Top Fin Algae wafers. I feed them 6 wafers in the morning and 8 at night. The next day all the wafers are gone. Am I feeding them properly? Do I feed them 2 times a day or just at night? Thank you so much for helping me.

Answer
Hi Al,

Wow! Your tank must get dirty really fast if you give your plecos 14 algae wafers a day. I would not feed them so many, even if they are eating them all. What I would do is alternate their diet with fresh vegetables.

Get a magnetic chip clip, and cut slices of zucchini, cucumber, or get a few leaves of romaine lettuce and spinach, and offer it to your plecos. They also like yellow squash, and some like sweet potato. The vegetables will soften if you leave them in the water a while, but I sometimes put the veggies in a bowl of water and microwave it for a few seconds just to make it soft right away. Your plecos should chow down on the veggies, which are much less polluting to your tank and just as healthy for them.

Check the ingredients in your algae wafers. Sometimes the first ingredient is fish meal or shrimp meal, and while this may make them taste great, this makes them more polluting since meaty foods foul an aquarium a lot faster than algae based foods. Omega One Super Veggie wafers have Spirulina as their first ingredient, so they're my top pick for plecos.

So Al, feed your plecos some vegetables! If you don't have a magnetic clip, you can impale the veggies with a butter knife and let it sink. They won't hurt themselves on it. If you do want to feed them algae wafers, I would feed them only 6 per day, total. So maybe two in the morning and four at night.  I hope that helps!

Take care,
Nicole