any tricks to coax fish to eat fresh fruit/veggies?

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I have all these nifty veggie clips with yum yum fresh squash, zucchini, cucumber, orange slices, lime slices, strawberries, apples.... (all fresh, thin sliced. none blanched)

I have also tried fresh and blanched corn and peas

occasionally a few will nip at fresh garlic.

Other than bloodworms, brine shrimp, krill and flakes, they won't eat anything!

Any tricks to get them to at least try the fruits and veggies? I have even let them starve for a day before trying it.
 
veggies

Do you leave the veggies in overnite? Often my fish won't touch them till lights out. Also if you are not blanching them, give it a shot. Sometimes the little guys want their food mushy. lol
 
i'll leave them in tonight. I keep my tanks a little on the warm side (80-84F) so they veggies will be pretty mushy by lights out or morning i figure =).

thanks for the advice. I have not left them overnight before.
 
i have to leave a cucumber in the tank for 2 days before the kissing gouramis and pleco touch it
 
It might take some time but by leaving it in the tank after lights out the fish will probably go for them then. Blanching before putting in the tank can help a lot too. I don't leave ay veggies in the tank for more than 24 hours.
 
forgive me for not knowing much about this but i had never heard of giving fish fresh vegetables before, until i read in this forum.

which kind of fish like vegetables in particular? or should they just be a once in a while treat?
 
sometimes i peel a grape and cut it up small, and it's never left in the morning. they also like watermellon, oranges, well, anything. i had a pirahna once that liked oranges too.
 
i had a pirahna once that liked oranges too.
lol! That made me chuckle, just the thought of the stereotypical macho carnivorous piranha having a delicate bite of an orange for lunch lol.

I find my fish love cucumber (is that what you call zucchini? :S). The brave among them will eat during the day, but it's usually got bit bite marks out of it the next morning (well, nibble marks but collectively it looks like someone took a chunk out lol).
Try leaving it in for 48 hours. I wouldn't leave food in for longer than that because it will begin to decay and that is no good.

Lettuce leaves (iceburg etc. i.e. plain green leaves etc.) also go down well I've found.

I believe skinned cooked peas are good for correcting things like swim bladder disorders. If you have a fish which is swimming at an angle (mmm, the best way I can describe it is if it looks somehow drunk lol), then try a couple and it should help.

I also once heard that (this is gross and I've never tried it!) some fish will eat things like dead flies. I wouldn't want to pollute my tank in the attempt to experiment, but has anyone got any proof of this?
 
actually, the second day I had my tiger barbs, a dead fly happened to land in my tank on a whim, and they went nuts on it. what was left once it sank was demloshed by the blue lobster.
 
Any fly in the house gets caught and fed to the fish. :twisted: I warn the bugs beforehand, so it's fair. But the fish love it, as long as they're not too big or crunchy. They don't like beetles, but flies and black ants have also worked well
 
Leave copies of the La Perla lingerie catalogue lying around. Whenever that comes to our house, my wife gets more interested in eating more fruits and vegetables.
 
On the topic of insects, I throw wayward moths into my tank all the time. My Oscar loves when I throw him a nice juicy moth. He gobbles them right up. They try to fly away, but he just jumps out of the water and catches them. He likes to jump for food, and he's getting bigger now, so I try not to encourage it anymore.

Lettuce leaves (iceburg etc. i.e. plain green leaves etc.) also go down well I've found.

I've heard that iceberg has virtually no nutritional value for fish and that you should feed them romaine if anything. Not sure how well that actually works out though.
 
Spinach is great, I use frozen chopped, when it thaws it is already mushy, plus a lot more nutritious than any lettuce.
 
Zucchini (particularly yellow), cucs, blanched beans and peas, blanched spinach, etc. do great in both the 75 community tank and the barb tank.
 
Sometimes if you don't feed them one time then feed them later on (like if you feed morning and night, don't feed morning) and then feed them they'll be more apt to try it. I've had best luck with peas and corn without doing this but my mollies and bettas liked Zucchini (which is the green squash) when it was steamed. I have better luck with my fish with peas the most even if they're not shelled (accidentally of course) they'll tear it open and my bettas especially love corn the most. Don't get too discouraged if your fish won't eat right away. Mine are used to being hand fed so anytime fingers with food go in my tank they think it's food (I don't have like..finger killing fish so I'm not too worried .__.) which they often will test food and then leave it alone until a few hours later. Sometimes breaking it up helps too ^^ HTH!
 
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