OK, I want to do an article on feeding fresh fruit and veg to fish and need your help. I want to know;

1. Which fruit and veg do you feed to your fish?

2. Which fish like what?

3. How do you prepare the food? Cooked or raw? Chopped finely or whole?

4. How do you add it to the tank? Just drop in, weight it down? If so, how?

To start you off;

1. peas and cucumber

2. BNs and barbs like both

3. Peas are cooked and shelled and whole or squished depending on how cleanly they came out of the skin. Cucumber gets sliced into 2cm thick rings

4. Peas get dropped in. Cucumber is threaded onto a plastic knitting needle and weighted with a sinker in the middle so it sits on the bottom.

I know an oscar who loved banana and would go through at least half a banana a day, given in 2cm chunks. Very messy!

A friend manages to keep her plants reasonably whole with her silver dollars by feeding them large amounts of lettuce, raw, and leaves just dropped in whole I believe.

Many fish will eat a wide range of fruit and veg and it is good for them. They eat them in the wild if they drop into their water.

Some, like carrots, may enhance the orange colouring of fish too. Tougher greens like cabbage need blanching (drop into boiling water for a minute) to break down the cellulose to make them more digestible.

Someone in another forum mentioned their fish died after feeding them potato and it turns out they didn't peel it first. Others thought the skin may be toxic (green) or covered in spray residue.

What fruit and veg do you feed your fish?

I like to feed vegies as often as possible, and I feed a big variety as well and always try new things. Here is a list of what I currently feed: mushroom, asparagus, chinese greens, spinach, kumera, cucumber, courgette, red and green capsicum, brocoli, peas, carrot, green beans..I have also tried kiwifruit (they didnt seem keen on that though) will try melon tonight for something different.

I drop half a corn cob in there once a fortnight, they absolutly love it but it makes such a huge mess to clean up in the morning I can't feed it too often.

The growth rate on my royals is excellent so I must be doing something right

I dont usually cook any of the vegies, I just chuck em in weighted down with a fork if necessary.

Oops.. forgot to add that I am feeding veges to about 8 species of plecos.

The royals and the flash plecs are into everything as is the common goldspot and BN. My heterodons are a bit more fussy - their favourite is cucumber and courgette, sometimes they dont touch the vegies at all. The magnum plec and the L52 butterflys are also quite fussy for some reason and hardly ever eat their greens.

I have yo yo loaches and clown loaches who also like their vegies - cucumber, capsicum and courgette being favoured the most.

thats about it I think.

I havent fed a large variety but heres mine

1 Peas

2 Bristlenose, corys

3 Cooked in hot water then shelled

4 they sink after that

1 cucumber

2 Bristlenose

3 sliced with skin on

4 Plant weight

Thats about me :lol:

Thanks guys just what I need to know. Anyone else?

1. zucchini cucumber and lettuce

2. Tadpoles

3. zucchini and cucumber in slivers, lettuce placed in boiling water and then frozen in small packets

4. zucchini and cucumber will initially float but will sink in a few hours or a day at most. frozen lettuce should sink immediatley.

my cucumber sinks! i slice it about 1/2 inch thick, chop in halves, cook it for a few minutes & then freeze it, i chuck it in the tank & it sinks within a few minutes, peas & beans i dunk in boiling water for about 30 seconds & thats it, apart for shelling the peas, raw spud i just slice a thin piece, rinse under the hot tap & chuck in, bn's like it better that the pleco at the moment.

Gold Severums don't like oranges.

Maybe it makes them feel like cannibals.

Just read a post elsewhere that said "Help I fed my fishes cucumber and now they are all dead!" Seems they did not wash it and it had pesticide on it. Something to think about. :-?

It would have had to have been practically dipped in a vat of pesticide and tossed in the tank to be that deadly.

Fed most of those mentioned.

But also yam's fresh, not cooked, and weighted down with plant lead. Most of my fancy plec's and BN's used to love them. Also broad beans went down well.

Cheers.

i have read of mango and capsicum being used but havent fed it myself- has anyone given those two a go?

I've used capsicum, bristlenoses loved it...more than zucchini.

did you do anything to it other than get the seeds out and cut it up like you would eat it?

also i wonder what the diff colours would do. paprika is made out of red capsicum isnt it? paprika is often used to bring out the reds in fish so i wonder if the green/yellow/orange would do the same?

chopped it up and threw it in tank...didn't worry bout seeds.

Anyone watch Brainiac the other day? They wanted to know if food could change a person's skin colour so they got 3 volunteers. The first ate nothing but red beet for a month, the second ate nothing but carrots and the third had to spend their month eating spinach. They wanted to make a human traffic light :lol:

At the end of the month, the beet person was slightly flushed looking, the carrot eater was a touch orange in the creases of inner elbow and behind ears and the spinach person showed no sign of green at all

They also tested the spinach eater's strength before and after to see if Popeye was right - he wasn't. :roll:

I eat up to 8 - 12 carrots a day and I am not orange. It has stopped me getting sunburned so easily and I brown more easily.

haha yeah thats heaps of carrots caryl. I usually eat about five or six banana's a day- sometimes up about 9 of them...

I don't know if he will go yellow (unless he eats the skins) but it might make him more appealing :lol:

I don't know if he will go yellow (unless he eats the skins) but it might make him more appealing

are you trying to say that I am not appealing enough caryl??? haha 8)

I would never suggest such a thing! :lol:

didn't you wonder why I have a paper bag over my head? its because I am so ravishingly gorgeous, I would be overrun by eager females!

but on to more serious matters, I have heard tadpoles like tomatos as well if you cut them in half. I have never tried it though- because it would fouul your water very quickly

Do you cut the tadpoles or the tomatoes in half?

I quite often throw leftovers from dinner in the tank.

One thing I didn't see mentioned was cooked rice - even the kuhlies come out for that - and the corys love it to pieces!

Also flies - I have an old fashoined flyswat - the black neons mainly but the glowlights and the widows really love em. I also occasionally give mossie larvae.

The BN's love just about any cooked veggie, I haven't tried apple yet tho.