The Myth that Pleco's eat Wood,
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ต.ค. 2024
- Why no plecos, plecostomus, L numbers or whiptails eat wood or use it for digestion within the aquarium. This video focuses on the science why these fishes are not xylovores and cannot digest wood. While looking at the genera Panaque (Royal Plecos), Panaqolus (flash pleco, clown pleco, tiger ), Lasiancistrus and Hypostomus (Cochliodon group such as the rusty pleco).
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Resources:
Lujan, N.K., German, D.P. and Winemiller, K.O., 2011. Do wood‐grazing fishes partition their niche?: morphological and isotopic evidence for trophic segregation in Neotropical Loricariidae. Functional Ecology, 25(6), pp.1327-1338.
besjournals.on...
German, D.P., Neuberger, D.T., Callahan, M.N., Lizardo, N.R. and Evans, D.H., 2010. Feast to famine: the effects of food quality and quantity on the gut structure and function of a detritivorous catfish (Teleostei: Loricariidae). Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A: Molecular & Integrative Physiology, 155(3), pp.281-293.
www.researchga...
McCauley, M., German, D.P., Lujan, N.K. and Jackson, C.R., 2020. Gut microbiomes of sympatric Amazonian wood‐eating catfishes (Loricariidae) reflect host identity and little role in wood digestion. Ecology and evolution, 10(14), pp.7117-7128.
onlinelibrary....
German, D.P., 2009. Inside the guts of wood-eating catfishes: can they digest wood?. Journal of Comparative Physiology B, 179(8), pp.1011-1023.
www.ncbi.nlm.n...
german.bio.uci...
How thoughtful, and yes, more digestible because you fed us more slowly. :-) Be encouraged and keep going. Thank You.
Haha I planned this a little bit but honestly done I think 3 or more videos on the topic beforehand
Excellent info and thoughtfully delivered! Thank you 😊
Thank you again for bringing this type of information to the industry.
Thanks for the video! I've heard people suggest growing algae on rocks is a good way to produce food for otocinclus. The idea is to keep a small tank in a window full of rocks and to swap these rocks into the main tank as they become covered in algae. Do you think it would be possible to 'farm' biofilm in a similar way, and do you think it would be a good way to produce a significant part of the diet of detritovore loricariids?
I've tried this and it never quite worked, managed to get a lot of mosquito larvae though. Also it's getting enough, for the algae these fishes will eat will clear a tank in less then a day.
More Informative mythbusting Rebecca love this 🙏🌈💚🦐🏴
Thank you!
Amazing content! I love my plecos and I'm glad to have this information to give them the best possible life!
Thank you!
Just tell everyone to feed their Plecos flat brown or Portobello mushrooms and de-shelled peas. I've feed so many species them (apart from a Zebra Pleco who love prawns/shrimp more).
Mushrooms & peas are the best pleco husbandry life-hack. These together (if you aren't a pleco nut with all the foods and gel mixes) seem to cater for most plecos need. Most fish love peas anyway. The good thing about mushrooms though, bar not clouding the tank if left in, is your other fish won't eat them, so the plecos can rasp on them all day, every day. Peas and mushrooms are cheap and readily available. I really wish more people in the hobby knew about feeding plecos mushrooms. Every store should tell new pleco owners about them. They thrive on fungus and I think that's what they want from wood and biofilms anyway. Just make sure they are human table food mushrooms, cos you don't want to poison, or send your plecos on a magic mushroom bad trip. Imagine that, a pleco tripping balls..."what am I? why is my mouth shaped like this? Man I suck!".
I do wish I hard half the desire to dive that deep and the ability to find the information. Maybe it's time for you to design the ultimate prepared food, or the recipe with the proper portions, etc. Thanks for sharing, Rebecca 😊
Thanks! I research a lot into Loricariid diets in general as it's a part of my studies.
I might share a recipe as I kind of want to stay unbiased with fish foods and if I made my own I couldn't be.
So not the wood itself. But the biofilm which is mostly fungi/algea on the wood can be a part of the food they eat? But you can get the same fungi/algea on other type of material... So wood is not really needed.. so is that a correct understanding?
This is true, this biofilm can grow anywhere and does grow on woods as much as on rocks. The material grows on other structures too such as rocks, none grow that much to sustain a fish.
You summarized it well, it's not a simple topic but more some Loricariids can exploit another niche to find the same food. Wood isn't needed but for some can provide more enrichment.
I would also note when people say other taxa eat wood, some woods like traditional bogwood you can scrape off with your nail easily. So in feeding normally some will pass through their gut.
If not for moss on a rock or bioflim on wood.. None of my pleco fry would make it the first weeks without it.. I'd not even try without wood or leaf litter..
I would say they probably can but biofilm grows on a lot of surfaces. Leaf litter is another thing as certainly not in many Loricariid habitats but more towards one subfamilies range, Loricariinae. The issue is most captive diets cater for no Loricariid given they are largely fish meal and cereals. Just Loricariids are more sensitive.
great content! in my experience, when kept well-fed and in good conditions, even the wood-chipping genera do not shred the wood into dust. hard wood somewhat minimizes their tendency to chip wood also, but it is mostly them being cared for properly. last note: it is foreseeable that some people will remain unconvinced and argue that wood is necessary, then one wonders how society has not gotten better with evidence-based scientific methods
Thank you :)
I agree, I always fed Panaque quite a bit known they should grow. They do grow and not sure they break as much wood down as they should.
I think given it's been over 15 years since the first paper and still now articles are constantly produced saying they do eat wood it's a myth that is difficult to shift.
I do worry that my clown pleco is getting enough to eat. I know when I first got the fish it scraped off lots of wood (and I thought it was eating the wood!), but it would eat Fluval pleco sticks too. Now I hardly ever see it, and I don't know if it is eating. I've had it for about a year and a half, and it doesn't seem to have grown very much. I wonder if something like Bacter AE would grow the type of biofilm and bacteria it needs.
Clowns, Panaqolus spp. are really forgiving and are usually very hidden. They aren't an issue so much with diet so while they aren't algivores I guess algaes are the closest we have to bacteria although spirulina is a bacteria. Bacter AE I've not had the chance to look much at though.
Honestly Loricariid diets are really diverse but brands aren't catering for it as detritivore and algivore diets have so much diversity but we don't have the products to treat it as such. Like some feed more on filamentous algae, others cyanobacteria, others bacteria etc.
Great discussion. It seems that the argument around wether certain genus of plecos benefit from consuming wood is based on an underlying assumption that if they are not digesting and taking nutrients from wood then it isn't beneficial to them.
However I wonder if other aspects of wood fiber in their guts are being overlooked. Has it been considered that these specific genus may use fiber as a substrate within their guts to promote certain types of microbiom in the latter portions of their intestines? Species of bacteria comprising gut microbiom vary based on the foods that they are provided or fed, so the studies that evaluated their gut microbiom may have been distorted based on the diets that their test subjects had consumed (if captive specimens were being studied it would not have been representative of a natural diet and gut microbiom). Is it possible that in the absence of fiber sources such as wood which are slow to breakdown, these specific genus of plecos could be digesting food too quickly, all in the initial stages of their intestines leading to bacterial overgrowth and then lacking beneficial gut microbiom in the later stages of their intestines? And also lacking in certain nutrients that take would normally be absorbed in the latter stages of their intestines because that part of the intestine is lacking a substrate to reside on..
They love Portobello Mushrooms! Looks like Knights of the round table, all in a circle around the mushrooms cap. I have 27 species of Pleco including a number or Panaques, and they will pick a flat brown mushroom over any other food. Great cos they don't foul the tank either, like courgettes do. You just need a fork with a fishing sinker attached to it, cos mushrooms are full of air and will float to the top, even with a large fork in them. It must replace the fungus they would get from wood biofilms and slimes or something. Also has a decent protein content, so some of the more meaty plecos like mushrooms too.
Great video on an interesting and misunderstood topic. Couldn't help but wonder how tailored to loricariid food preferences most commercial "catfish/pleco wafers" out there really are. Most seam to contain only spirulina and S. cerevisiae as bacterial and fungal food sources respectively and only as a small percentage of the total volume of ingredients; The majority seams to be comprised mostly by fish and wheat meals.
Could this compromise on ingredients hurt detrivore members of the family in the long term like slowing normal growth rate, disturbing the gut biome etc?
I'm assuming this compromise is made mostly due to challenges in marketing such speciallized and potentially expensive foods to the mainstream fishkeeping community and not on actual missing info on loricariid diet by most companies.
Thank you! I don't think there are many tailored for Loricariids, but most fish diets are so similar based on aquaculture. I believe the brewers yeast is added for other reasons. I'd like to see a wider range of algae's available but I guess for quite a few it's just availability. I mostly see different macroalgaes which don't seem popular with most fishes, I would like to try Irish moss but the price per a kg is comparatively higher then other macro algaes.
I don't think there is much research into actual Loricariid nutrition but there is a paper that used 100% one species of algae or Hikari algae wafers and just that one species of algae performed as well or better.
A lot of fish food brands are actually selling white label products or most customers don't really seem to care about ingredients. If you look at Dr Bassler it has similar ingredients as Hikari and yet is much more popular. I personally think their diets are misunderstood by brands given how many are still adding cellulose powder even recently.
Why do many of the specialist pleco foods, say "contains wood fibre", if it's not really taken up, and it's just the biofilm they're after? Why would all these companies add an unneeded ingredient into their pleco foods?
Because people who think it's necessary will pay more to buy it, basically snake oil.
Most seem to only contain cellulose powder, I assume it's the easy to obtain version and I guess cellulose is one of the main parts of wood.
They have it because it sells, the idea that plecos need wood is so widespread that brands know people will buy foods that claim to include the ingredient their fishes 'need'.
@@FreshwaterIchthyology Okidoki, thank you for that. Why do you think my driftwoods get rasped away so much then? It's not like they are eating the wood because they have no other food source, as they get every possible pleco food you can imagine and are all growing steadily. I make sure all 27 species I have, get a full smorgasbord, as plecos are my passion. (I hate how people think they're just algae eating tank cleaners. There's much better fish for that, like Royal Whiptail Sturisoma). Even if they are not utilizing the wood in there guts, they certainly are doing something (even if just shaving it down and not ingesting it), as I start with a big piece of Malaysian softwood driftwood, and it ends up tiny, like how you end up with a tiny bar of soap. I think my least exotic plecos, all bristlenoses, like the longfin bristlenose, calico bristlenose and starlight bristlenose are responsible for the bulk of the whittling down of my driftwoods. My very first pleco, a common pleco, lived for 27 years. Which I think could be some kind of record? Not only did he eat a whole courgette a day, he had learned to swim up to the surface, turn over, and feed on the other fishes flake foods. He ended up 38cm long. Love your vids, and happy to see someone as passionate about them as myself.
Can you also talk about garlic in fish foods?
So many fish foods have it now and people talk about it all the time but I have also read that it is toxic to fish.
I could maybe do a video on the topic. I'm not entirely convinced it is good nor bad, but if it gets a fish eating at first that would be the use for it.
G'day Rebecca, a little off topic but is it true that Plecos can't detect red light? Or is that just a myth? I have some L600s and would like to be able to see them coming out to feed at night.
I'm not sure but it's likely most Loricariids have reasonable colour vision, although in deep or high turbidity water red is first absorbed. So the species from black waters or deep waters probably wouldn't need to see red, so likely wouldn't and I'd say L600 might fit into that.