I earlier wrote an article on what fruits and vegetables you can feed to your tropical fish, which you can find over here. So I thought I would cover how to actually do it in practice, so what you will need is your vegetable of choice: Zucchini, Cucumber, Lettuce, or Spinach. Cut off a large enough piece that is enough for your fish and easy for you to be able to handle and put in your aquarium.
What we want to do is blanch our veggies, blanching is a technique that involves quickly cooking food in boiling water and then dunking it in ice water to stop the cooking process. So fill a small pot with some water and get it boiling, once it’s boiling add your veggies and boil it for 5-10 minutes. It should be semi-soft to the touch and not totally cooked, otherwise, it becomes hard to handle.
When it is ready, remove the pot from the plate and take out the veggies you blanched and add them to a container of cold water with ice (The ice is optional). Let it cool down for a couple of minutes, you don’t want to add hot vegetables to your aquarium and risk your fish burning themselves with the hot food.
I used a kebab stick to impale my veggies and then stick it in my aquarium’s substrate, but if that does not work for you, then you can use a small fork or even a piece of decor like a rock to weigh it down, so it would be easier for your fish and shrimp to eat without it getting dislodged and drifting all over your aquarium.
Now put it in the tank for 6-8 hours and watch as your fish, shrimp, and snails enjoy their veggie snack! After 6-8 hours remove the uneaten parts from your aquarium as cooked veggies do spoil rather quickly.
