Continuing on yesterday’s topic of fishy food groups, today we will focused on some more specialized groups. Pretty much the About.com article I read changed from classifying different foods to the fish that eat those certain foods, if that makes sense. So this post will be just a bit different from yesterday’s, but still follows along the same theme. Again, I’d like to thank Stan and Debbie Hauter for taking the time to put together the wonderful article at About.com where I got both my inspiration and material for these blog posts.
Continuing on from yesterday we come to General Bottom Feeders. These fish are sometimes known as “sucker fish” and they are opportunistic feeders. These guys will eat pretty much anything they can get their mouths on. Crustaceans, small fish, worms, and more will be gladly consumed by these bottom feeders.
Next we have fish who eat fish. These guys will generally lure smaller fish in and attack them when they aren’t prepared. You shouldn’t keep these predatory fish in a tank with other fish, as they will, umm, eat them. You should provide these fish with a live feeder fish diet to keep them healthy.
Coral feeders do just what it sounds like they do. These fish generally eat the polyps that grow inside the skeleton of stony corals. While this isn’t harmful on a small scale, if you have too many of these fish in your aquarium you may find yourself without any coral.
Crustacean feeders work in much the same way as coral feeders. They eat crustaceans, what a surprise! Small crabs and shrimp are the main items on these fishs’ diets, but they won’t shy away from downing worms and clams as well.
General invertebrate feeders eat the smaller or less mobile inverts. This could include motile crabs, shrimp, snails , sea urchins, coral polyps, or even starfish. Generally these types of fish aren’t harmful to an aquarium because there are usually larger numbers of invertebrates present.
Finally we have fish that eat parasites. This may seem harmful, but actually it does a lot of good in an aquarium. You may sometimes see these fish picking parasites off of other species and then eating them. This rids fish of parasites and provides some nutrition for those who consume the parasites.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this two-parter! Let me know what you think by posting a comment!