Varied Diet
- Thread starter Cammie
- Start date
Baby brine shrimp, shrimp pellets, and blanched vegetables are also some suggestions. I highly recommend blanched vegetables. To blanch a vegetable, boil water for a couple minutes. Then, drop the chopped vegetables into the water. Boil 5 minutes, or until soft. But do not boil too long, or you could remove beneficial nutrients. If you don't boil the vegetables, they don't sink in the water and they are harder to eat. I boil a bunch of veggies and stick them in a baggie in the fridge for the week.
It really depends on which veggies your fish will like. Mine go crazy for broccoli, but will only pick at celery. This summer, I'll try fresh, home-grown spinach and zucchini. Lettuce is good, but it has to be romaine. Iceburg has no nutritional value.
It really depends on which veggies your fish will like. Mine go crazy for broccoli, but will only pick at celery. This summer, I'll try fresh, home-grown spinach and zucchini. Lettuce is good, but it has to be romaine. Iceburg has no nutritional value.
I'll give you a link to my guide to livebearer foods. these foods will work with all your fish.
Livebearer Diet Information
your plec can also eat blanched broccoli, and raw sweet pepper slices as long as you cut off the skin of the sweet pepper.
Livebearer Diet Information
your plec can also eat blanched broccoli, and raw sweet pepper slices as long as you cut off the skin of the sweet pepper.
Yeah, Doom mentioned that when I was talking about putting a sweet pepper in the tank - apparently it can 'burn' albino fish. BTW, my Albino BN never showed any 'burn' after his lunch on a piece of yellow pepper, but still, I will never put a piece in my tank with the skin on again. Great tip.
BTW, blanching to make the vegetable sink is, I suppose, one reason to blanch, but you can just take that piece of raw zucchini/spinach/pepper and secure around a rock with an elastic.
And hey, littletank, you are almost right about cooking vegetables! But blanching doesn't mean boiling for five minutes, it just means immersing for thirty seconds in boiling water and rinsing immediately in ice cold water to keep the colour and nutrients intact. At least in my culinary world, that's what 'blanching' means - I'd think that might be the same for feeding fish?
I've even accidentally put raw spinach in my tank - the tank water softens the leaf pretty quickly, and my fish devoured it.
But I think it would be important to wash the veggies well, if not blanching them, to get rid of any pesticides.
BTW, blanching to make the vegetable sink is, I suppose, one reason to blanch, but you can just take that piece of raw zucchini/spinach/pepper and secure around a rock with an elastic.
And hey, littletank, you are almost right about cooking vegetables! But blanching doesn't mean boiling for five minutes, it just means immersing for thirty seconds in boiling water and rinsing immediately in ice cold water to keep the colour and nutrients intact. At least in my culinary world, that's what 'blanching' means - I'd think that might be the same for feeding fish?
I've even accidentally put raw spinach in my tank - the tank water softens the leaf pretty quickly, and my fish devoured it.
But I think it would be important to wash the veggies well, if not blanching them, to get rid of any pesticides.
Hey littletank: upon further reflection, there are times when cooks mix up the meaning of 'blanching' and 'parboiling'. Maybe the fish sites you were visiting that recommend 'blanching' vegetables by boiling for several minutes are also doing the same - parboiling is what you do when you want a firmer vegetable, like potato or carrot, to be almost cooked through and then you 'finish' the vegetable by sauteeing or whatever to add the crispiness, let the sauce infuse, etc.
Anyway, no more on the culinary aspect.
I'm going to guess that for fish, a firm veg like broccoli stems should be boiled longer so that the plant matter is easier to digest - so I could see that parboiling would be a good idea (as in boiling for at least two minutes). However for soft leafy veg's like spinach or lettuce, they need very little boiling to almost break down. What I've been doing that seems to work and takes no time at all is literally pouring a bit of boiling water from my tea kettle over the spinach leaf, running it immediately under very cold tap water, and fastening to a rock with an elastic band. This way you don't have get a whole pot of water boiling, and can easily do a couple leaves at a time as needed.
Anyway, no more on the culinary aspect.
I'm going to guess that for fish, a firm veg like broccoli stems should be boiled longer so that the plant matter is easier to digest - so I could see that parboiling would be a good idea (as in boiling for at least two minutes). However for soft leafy veg's like spinach or lettuce, they need very little boiling to almost break down. What I've been doing that seems to work and takes no time at all is literally pouring a bit of boiling water from my tea kettle over the spinach leaf, running it immediately under very cold tap water, and fastening to a rock with an elastic band. This way you don't have get a whole pot of water boiling, and can easily do a couple leaves at a time as needed.