What do bottom-feeding suckers and catfishes eat from mud and debris?

Bottom-feeding fishes, including suckers, many catfishes, long-snouted knifefishes, and some minnows, consume mud and bottom debris to extract the necessary nutriments contained within the material, subsequently ejecting the remaining residue.1

While these species specifically process mud and debris for nutrients, other bottom-dwelling fishes exhibit different feeding strategies. For instance, some mountain stream fishes possess specialized suckerlike lips to scrape algae from rocks. Additionally, many suckers (family Catostomidae) are known to feed by sucking up various invertebrates and plants from the bottom of lakes and slow streams.12