Feeding on benthic organisms such as algae in the silt, also feeding on zooplankton. Artificial feeding, can be fed insects, small crustaceans, water earthworms, young plant stems and leaves, but also can be fed soybean cake, bean dregs, brown chaff and so on.

The loach is an omnivorous fish, body length of 5 centimeters below the loach fry mainly ingested animal bait, such as rotifers, branches and horns, copepods and other zooplankton, body length of 5-8 centimeters, in addition to ingesting small crustaceans, insect larvae, earthworms, but also ingested higher aquatic plants, algae, and organic detritus, etc., and then gradually become omnivorous fish, almost omnivorous, all the water and mud, plants and animals and organic detritus, is the most important. All the plants and animals in the water and mud and organic debris are the natural bait of loach. Loach is the most gluttonous for animal bait, especially love to eat fish eggs. After the parent loach spawns eggs, if it is not taken in time, it will often eat the eggs it spawns. Loach foraging is mainly by the mouth whiskers to complete, its five pairs of tentacles are both "detectors" to help find food, but also "filters" to help sort out food, palatable into the mouth, not palatable to discard, while eating, while looking, while moving. Because of the wide range of loach feeding, so mixed with other fish can often play the role of "cleaner". Most of the loach lurks in the mud during the day, preferring to go out in the middle of the night to forage for food, and if the environment is quiet, sometimes they also come out during the day. In general, the loach gut food for its body weight of 8-10%; in the breeding season, the amount of food intake is greater, loach different growth stages of food is not exactly the same.