Feeding Fish Vegetables

[Enigma]

Apparently, some fish are supposed to be fed vegetables. This is an entirely new concept to me.

I did some reading online last night, and I found plenty of references for the feeding of veggies to freshwater fish. Feeding suggestions for saltwater fish were few and far between.

If the feeding of veggies would be beneficial to my critters, I would certainly like to attempt it.

Does anyone have any suggestions or experiences to share?

[Aquattro]

I feed kale to my tangs once in a while. You need to blanche it to break down the fiber. However, I'm not sure it's beneficial if they get a good variety of seaweed and meaty bits. Let's face it, the typical fish doesn't come across veggies all that often

[mike31154]

I've put blanched romaine lettuce & spinach on the veggie clip in the past. Yellow Tang took it, but not all that enthusiastically. I even read somewhere that banana peel will work for some & that it's beneficial due to the potassium. My tang never touched it. Both the tang & my angelfish love the bulk nori I serve up so I simply stick to that these days. I recall reading that nori has more nutrition in it than anything we can grow in our gardens. And yeah, not too much spinach, romaine floating around in the sea, a banana or two maybe.

[Enigma]

Thanks for the ideas, guys.

I did think the recommendation was a little odd. I have a whole host of foods at my disposal (several flakes, several pellets, several types of frozen, Arctipods, nori) . . . but I'm supposed to feed veggies? Peas and zucchini appear to be very popular with the FW folks.

I'm not sure why either of those would be any sort of appropriate, natural, species specific diet . . . for anything other than my Holland Lop rabbit (versus my Foxface Rabbitfish).

[reefwars]

read your fish food ingerdients i bet its mostly vegetables and shrimp:P:P

most of mine are anyways:P

[reefwars]

in my nls pellets bottle in my hand it says:

red and green spinach
pea
broccoli
red pepper
zucchini
tomato
kiwi
apricot
pear
mango
apple
papaya
peach


a frend and me yesterday were reading the ingredients and alot of these have copper traces in them

[fishytime]

Ive fed banana (the fruit itself) to my fish before.....most of them took to it....you really have to smoosh it up and make it bite sized tho....Ive never fed veggies

[FragIt Dan]

+1 on RD's comments. I co-wrote a publication in Limnology and Oceanography regarding Cu and Fe in the Ocean. Cu, along with many other elements found in fish food (and vegetables as well) have an acceptable range in concentration that is beneficial to each organism. I was actually able to negatively effect some phytoplankton by decreasing the Cu concentration to very low levels. Trace amounts of Cu found in fish foods (and fresh or blanched veggies) are not enough to raise the concentration above levels that are detrimental to anything in your tank.

As for fresh veggies, I am sure that some of the coral foods that I have tried are, in part, veggie juice. IMO, just because lettuce is not found in the ocean, doesn't mean it isn't good for your fish or corals. Nutritional content may be just fine, but the companies selling you stuff would have you believe otherwise .
Dan