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HOw many algae pellets should u feed to catfishes. In my 55 i had 2 upsidedown catfishes and 2 Bns. 1 bn and 1 upside down cat have grown significantly, while the other two stay small. Is one spirulina tab enough for 4 2-2.5 inch catfishes?

Upside down catfish micropredate as well as scavenge and browse, so it might be worth trying them with few other types of foods like regular flakes and even a little frozen livefood. Id stick with the one algae wafer unless the bn's are a bit short of algae, and just give them some added diet variety from other sources. They may well accept a decent quality granular food. Just a pinch of that and the wafers you already give them and they should do fine, hopefully it should bring the slower growers on a bit.

These catfish do need watching for obesity though, so dont overdo it.

i was feeding 1 to all 4 for a while and 2 grew while 2 didn't. Is this normal? or are some showing their dominance by hogging the food. Would dividing the wafer into smaller pieces and distributing around the tank get rid of this problem?

It probably will help, but dominance should not be a major issue for this species, they are pretty social, but the point is that algae wafers are not a complete diet for them.

They need variety and some wormy foods in the diet. Without variety they will not get the full range of nutrients and proteins required for full growth. Give them a variety of small foods that spread around the tank anyway and you may soon find the others catching up to the big one. Its a more natural feeding situation for the fish to go looking for food around the tank and browsing on lots of small amounts rather than just eating off a wafer.

Their lack of vigour may be down to the lack of diet variety. Look beyond the wafers for the solution. Try some freeze dried tubifex, some bloodworm, or glassworm, maybe a little brineshrimp and they will soon put some size on.

Most fish do very badly and do not live long on a monotypic diet. Remember while this fish includes algae in the diet, it is an omnivore and must have access to more variety. Its not like keeping a plecostomus.

lhg, are dried tubifex available in packets or do u buy them from bait shops etc.
Should bloodworms be live or the freeze dried kind?

Algae tablets contain nearly as much crude protein as do carnivore pellet fare. There is no dried substitute for fresh roughage in the ancistrus diet.

Wasnt talking about the plecs- I was referring to the upside down catfish. I wouldnt buy fish food from a bait shop either, theyre not really formulated with fish health in mind there. Id go to a LFS. Choose the freeze dried over the live ones as there is much less risk of introducing disease into your tank. Many tubifex are raised in filthy conditions, freeze drying kills the germs and parasites. Usually you can just buy tubs of them full of compressed and dried cubes of the worms.

Cup is right about the bn's really needing fresh veggie fare like courgettes etc, although mine certainly do willingly eat algae wafers. Its just a shame most algae wafers arent made with much algae!