Written by Gopherboy OK, most of use have fish that feed on the bottom, mainly catfish such as corydora, but many others, the probelm of feeding these fish in the usual manner is that all the other fish will get most of the food first, and as the food drifts down through the water column, it spreads all over the substrate making a real mess, so I came up with this very simple yet extremely effective tool to get around the problem.
All you need is a Syphon (a food grade one, very cheap and easy to obtain, the bigger the diameter of the tube the better though) and a length of tubing (external filter type is ideal) cut to a few inches more than the height of the tank from the water surface to the substrate.
Simply push the end of the syphon into the hose and hey presto job done.
Now, when you come to feed the bottom squad, its simply a matter of holding the tube and aiming the end at where the food is to go, and dropping it in, some things like algae wafers or larger pellets may be too big (so either drop these in seperately or break them up).
Dont tip a mass of food in as it may clog the pipe (alot of fish food swells on contact with water) and some items may be a little reluctant to sink at first, so either wait a little while, or gently raise n lowere the funnel until the food sinks.
The great thing is that most of the top n middle dwellers will not show interest in the food which means you can actually feed less than normal as the desired target fish will get the vast majority of the food. It also means you no longer have to wait until unsociable times of the night to feed such fish (altho evening is still best purely to stop the food rotting whilst the nocuturnal fish sleep).
Thu Dec 13, 2007 10:29 pm
