Feeding Lettuce

[ReeferDave01]

Has anyone tried feeding their fish lettuce? Last year I was at a huge public aquarium (believe Disney Animal Kingdom) and remember them dropping romaine lettuce into the tank & fish went crazy over it. Does anyone else do it & what veggies do you feed? Do you soak them in RODI water first? How often? What kind of fish?

 

[Zack K]

Yes I do feed lettuce. I personally rinse in tap water but RODI water is probably a better option. I Feed leaf lettuce to my fox face and lawnmower blenny. I feed them just enough for them to eat in about an hour. I put it on a clip in the tank as you would a sheet of dried seaweed. You have to remember Disney has a lot of fish so make you size pieces small enough so it can be finished in about an hour. As for what will eat it, I have heard tangs, blennies, rabbitfish, butterfly's, like it.

 

[CodyRVA]

Has anyone tried feeding their fish lettuce? Last year I was at a huge public aquarium (believe Disney Animal Kingdom) and remember them dropping romaine lettuce into the tank & fish went crazy over it. Does anyone else do it & what veggies do you feed? Do you soak them in RODI water first? How often? What kind of fish?

I used to feed whole romaine leaves to my kole tang and foxface. They love it, but it can make a mess. I always ended up with small clearish pieces of lettuce floating around, usually from the stock or center of the leaf (they tend to not eat that part). I didn't soak it or anything, but thoroughly cleaned it before feeding. I just placed it on a regular feeding clip and they went to town. My suggestion is to clean the leaves well and remove the center/stock part of the leaf before feeding; I never did because it was easier to just drop it in there.

 

[laga77]

Fish cannot digest plants, they eat algae. Some Parrotfish can eat seagrass but everything else passes right through. You would be better off to feed cheato and caulerpa.

 

[CodyRVA]

Fish cannot digest plants, they eat algae. Some Parrotfish can eat seagrass but everything else passes right through. You would be better off to feed cheato and caulerpa.

Interesting, do they get any nutrition from it at all?

 

[tgp4274]

I feed three full leaves of romain to my tangs every day
n they don't poop lettuce.... lol
even my blue angle loves it

 

[ReeferDave01]

Fish cannot digest plants, they eat algae. Some Parrotfish can eat seagrass but everything else passes right through. You would be better off to feed cheato and caulerpa.

Thats actually interesting. I have 210g tank with sump & separate fuge & producing ton of chaeto & caulerpa. Always have thrown it out. Do you just take a bunch & clip it? Do I need to do anything to it before I feed it?

 

[laga77]

It is like humans eating grass. We don't have the enzymes necessary for digestion. I grab a golf ball size chunk everyday from one of my dumps and throw it in the FOWLR

 

[Zack K]

Thats actually interesting. I have 210g tank with sump & separate fuge & producing ton of chaeto & caulerpa. Always have thrown it out. Do you just take a bunch & clip it? Do I need to do anything to it before I feed it?

You can but be careful. If it latches to a rock then you have fuge algae in the display. That of course is not fun. If you have enough tangs you can experiment with a little bit.

 

[laga77]

If you have cheato or caulerpa in your fuge,there are small pieces going into the display all the time anyway.

 

[AllSignsPointToFish]

My fish won't even touch the lettuce. lol

 

[Lionfish Lair]

Fish are commonly fed and obtain nutrition from "land plants".

 

[Reefing Madness]

I feed my Tangs Romaine Lettuce 3 times per week.

 

[laga77]

Fish are commonly fed and obtain nutrition from "land plants".

"Terrestrial plant lipids are well known to cause heart and liver lesions in marine fish. The problem with feeding terrestrial plant oils (not just garlic but any terrestrial plant oil) to reef fish is problematic due the nature of the lipids the fish do not possess the enzymes to digest them correctly and this leads to fatty deposits and serious pathological changes in the heart and liver of fish that are fed these lipids. Although these are not instantly fatal they cause chronic change to these organs and long term deterioration in the health of the fish. Granted much of this his work is done on farmed fish, but it is a well known phenomena and here are some of the research papers that detail this problem."

AH, Sargent JR, Thompson KD 1993
Terrestrial and fish oils affect phospholipid fatty acid composition, development of cardiac lesions, phospholipase activity and eicosanoid production in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar).
Prostaglandins Leukot Essent Fatty Acids. 49(3):665-73

Along with the above info, "land plants" are made up of cellulose. AKA fiber. Only grazing animals like cows, horses, and sheep, have the long intestinal tracts and bacterial and enzymes to digest cellulose. When you look up marine fish sites about feeding lettuce to fish, they will say to blanch it to break down the cellulose. Guess what? it does not work. Cellulose needs to be heated to 350C to break down. The only thing blanching does is break the Turgor pressure which makes the plant rigid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turgor_pressure

 

[Lionfish Lair]

"Terrestrial plant lipids are well known to cause heart and liver lesions in marine fish. The problem with feeding terrestrial plant oils (not just garlic but any terrestrial plant oil) to reef fish is problematic due the nature of the lipids the fish do not possess the enzymes to digest them correctly and this leads to fatty deposits and serious pathological changes in the heart and liver of fish that are fed these lipids. Although these are not instantly fatal they cause chronic change to these organs and long term deterioration in the health of the fish. Granted much of this his work is done on farmed fish, but it is a well known phenomena and here are some of the research papers that detail this problem."

AH, Sargent JR, Thompson KD 1993
Terrestrial and fish oils affect phospholipid fatty acid composition, development of cardiac lesions, phospholipase activity and eicosanoid production in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar).
Prostaglandins Leukot Essent Fatty Acids. 49(3):665-73

Along with the above info, "land plants" are made up of cellulose. AKA fiber. Only grazing animals like cows, horses, and sheep, have the long intestinal tracts and bacterial and enzymes to digest cellulose. When you look up marine fish sites about feeding lettuce to fish, they will say to blanch it to break down the cellulose. Guess what? it does not work. Cellulose needs to be heated to 350C to break down. The only thing blanching does is break the Turgor pressure which makes the plant rigid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turgor_pressure

Your reference is about replacing 100% of the fish oil with Sunflower oil and linseed oil. That's not really applicable to this discussion about obtaining nutrients from the supplementation of things like lettuce.

You don't have to be able to digest all of the matter to derive benefits from it. I don't mean to be gross, but think about people and corn. I think we can all agree there are nutritional benefits from eating corn, but when we eat it we're not digesting it all.

 

[Lionfish Lair]

This is just a peek into some of the things that have been studied as far as terrestrial sources of nutrients and fish feeds.

As you can see, plant matter isn't automatically void of usefulness, just because it comes from the land or just because all matter can't be digested. It's another cool ingredient to increase our fish' exposure to more varied nutrients.
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[laga77]

Trout and salmon are from the same family and live in fresh water part of their lives. Catfish and Tilapia are fresh water fishes. All of these fish have evolved eating plants. Reef fish have evolved in their own ecosystem for millions of years and have separate nutritional needs, none of them have anything to do with plants.

 

[Lionfish Lair]

Trout and Salmon are carnivores. They have not evolved to eat plants of any sort.

 

[cloak]

I used to feed my tangs Romaine lettuce, but then I noticed that the lettuce comin looked exactly the same coming out so I stopped.
Any of the prepared foods they sell at your LFS is a much better alternative IMO.

 

[Lionfish Lair]

There are vitamins to be had in the fluids of the lettuce. It should not be used as a replacement of anything, but just as an addition. My foxface didn't poop out anything that looked like lettuce, but again, that's not where my concern was. My concern is the vitamins that are absorbed while the fibrous mass passes through the gut.