Edible Greens For Wilds

[Second Hand Pat]

... the bloodworms are not great nutritionally and sets the discus up to refuse better foods...

I don't want to turn this into a debate, but what's not nutritional about bloodworms? I agree they can become addicting, but they are still nutritional.

Actually I said "not great nutritionally" (meaning as compared to other foods) and honestly I am parroting what I have read here on the board and therefore have no scientific source to quote from. Point was someone has discus refusing foods and feeding bloodworms "can be" part of the problem due to their addicting nature.

Is that better?

Exreefer, are you an engineer??

[ExReefer]

Actually I said "not great nutritionally" (meaning as compared to other foods) and honestly I am parroting what I have read here on the board and therefore have no scientific source to quote from. Point was someone has discus refusing foods and feeding bloodworms "can be" part of the problem due to their addicting nature.

Is that better?

Exreefer, are you an engineer??

No worries. No, not an engineer.

[NanDiscus]

I did try to feed many different types of plant matter to my discus and I now have a rather long list of what they like and what they don't like.

The Xingús will eat:
watermelon
apricot
mulberries
raspberries
very sweet orange flesh
very ripe plum flesh
and the green algae I srape off of the insides of the tank. I always let them eat as much of it as they like before I vaccum the rest.

The Xingús will not eat:
spinach
bananas
pineapple
strawberries
cherries
and those I can't remember just now.

I don't prepare food mixes any longer so I try to keep my fish on a varied diet which -according to what I've read about wilds in general and what I've experienced in my own tank- I think should include some sort of greenery. I often see them graze on the branch that's closest to the neon tube and is covered with a thin film of beautifully green algae.

I guess this question of feeding or not feeding green stuff to our wilds is purely philosophical as many seem to be keeping them on a low-green diet and the fish are just fine. It is not something to have a debate about, but sharing experiences is definately a good thing to do. Mine are very different from the average I see above but I have no reason to question experiences different to mine.

Nandi

[2wheelsx2]

Mine peck away at the deshelled frozen peas, but don't eat it heartily like my other fish. I feed the peas mainly for my plecos, but all the cories and tetras love them too. And my other cichlids love them. Just not so much for the discus.

[yogi]

I don't know if this is true or not. Marc Weiss claims that discus do not get nutrients from eating greens. He says they eat them because that is what is available while they are looking for food and that is why it is found in their stomachs, but it mostly passes right through them. He does say they get nutrients from predigested greens. He says this happens when they eat bugs, insects and crustaceans that have digested greens.

When he spoke at the NADA convention he also brought up something I haven't seen mentioned on the forums in a long time. He said something like feeding at least once a week brine shrimp might ward off hexamita. The thinking behind this is the shell scrapes the intestines and knocks off the hexamita. Something Dick Au mentioned at the convention was. He never saw garlic cure fish of anything. Both of them think using peat filtered water with wilds is beneficial.

[William Palumbo]

Interesting Jerry about the Brine Shrimp. Worth looking into...Bill

[Second Hand Pat]

Jerry, did Marc Weiss indicate whether the brine shrimp were live/frozen and baby/adult?

[ExReefer]

I've noticed my discus grab a piece of floating plant in the water column and eat it from time to time. I know they will eat some plant matter, but do they need it in order to thrive in captivity? I don't believe so.

[Darrell Ward]

I don't know if this is true or not. Marc Weiss claims that discus do not get nutrients from eating greens. He says they eat them because that is what is available while they are looking for food and that is why it is found in their stomachs, but it mostly passes right through them. He does say they get nutrients from predigested greens. He says this happens when they eat bugs, insects and crustaceans that have digested greens.

When he spoke at the NADA convention he also brought up something I haven't seen mentioned on the forums in a long time. He said something like feeding at least once a week brine shrimp might ward off hexamita. The thinking behind this is the shell scrapes the intestines and knocks off the hexamita. Something Dick Au mentioned at the convention was. He never saw garlic cure fish of anything. Both of them think using peat filtered water with wilds is beneficial.

Not meant as a slam, but I have always thought of Marc Weiss as a "snake oil salesman" based on outrageous claims about his reef products. However, that sounds like it might actually have some truth to it.

[Second Hand Pat]

I have heard the same on the reef side of the house. There is a little pearl in horse training that goes something like this "Take what you can use and leave the rest". Could apply here too.

[yogi]

I would think it would have to be adult brine shrimp since they would have a harder shell or skeleton. I do not know if live is better then frozen. I also see my discus pull on the leaves of the floating plants, but I think if I give them a choice between worms or plants they will always eat the worms first.

Since Marc wasn't selling products, but just giving a talk on discus and his experience I hope he was telling the truth. Even people you might not like can have good information sometimes. He also mentioned about enhancing baby brine shrimp when feeding it to fry. There are a couple of articles about it at brine shrimp direct. http://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/Enr...hrimp-c82.html and http://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/Enr...ulina-c89.html

[Jhhnn]

I add baby bok choi from the nearby asian supermarket to Eddie's seafood mix, and my domestics go for it. I have no wilds. I also feed Hikari spirulina brineshrimp for variety. Expensive, but nobody said this would be cheap.

[ericatdallas]

I don't know if this is true or not. Marc Weiss claims that discus do not get nutrients from eating greens. He says they eat them because that is what is available while they are looking for food and that is why it is found in their stomachs, but it mostly passes right through them. He does say they get nutrients from predigested greens. He says this happens when they eat bugs, insects and crustaceans that have digested greens.
.

My question is, why does this Marc Weiss (I have no idea who he is) think that animal bio-matter is treated any different than plant bio-matter by the Discus digestive system. Most animals have very similar biology when it comes to basic functions. I assume (I could be wrong) that Discus have digestive acids and enzymes like most(all?) the other multicellular organisms. When it comes down to it, once bio-matter is broken down, nutrients are nutrients. There are a few exceptions such as cellulose is not easily digestible and not all animals have the enzymes to break down certain material (think lactase/lactose for instance).

Also, why would evolution favor something so disadvantageous as eating something that has no nutritional value? It takes energy to consume and expel undigested plant matter. If Discus couldn't digest plant material it would be better for them to ignore it (otherwise, they would eat poop, rocks, etc). That's not to say it doesn't happen (rarely naturally) but a good counterexample is splenda and other artificial sweeteners. The difference is those are artificial while the Discus has had a lot more time to evolve a digestive system to either utilize plant matter or a system to outright reject it.

I don't know, I'm not a biologist, but basic science makes me hesitant to take this guy seriously. I would need some serious evidence (i.e. examination of discus excrement).

[yogi]

I said in my opening statement I don't know if it's true or not. I know I have seen my discus eat poop. They sift along the bottom of the tank and take in poop, most of the time they spit it out. Look what happens when humans eat corn on the cob. Take a look at your poop and you'll seen whole undigested pieces in it. A lot of dog food products contain corn products and your dog happily eats it, but get no nutrition from it.

[Darrell Ward]

I'm not a biologist, but my feeling is that the dissected wilds that were found to have plant material in the gut, is because the fish were hungry, and that was what was immediately available to them. I say this because I've had hundreds of both wild and domestic discus over the years, and not one of them would choose plant material over a juicy black worm, or other high protein snack. A person could probably convince a healthy discus to eat many things if the fish were hungry enough.