Plecos & Cucumber -- How Long Can You Leave It in the Tank?

I've noticed that too Katana, but I thought that was more starchy vegetables that were the culprit...like potato and pumpkin, which I don't feed any longer because any longer it makes the water cloudy. 0 ppm of ammonia and nitrite, just cloudy water almost like what you get during a bacterial bloom. Clears up in a bit though, as you say.

Interestingly, corn doesn't seem to cause any problem - I've sometimes fed my goldfish kernels of fresh corn.
 
my plecos took a few days with the cucumber, but I find feeding zucchini goes better as they will devour it in a day or two at most, even fresh, mine dont even leave the skin if it's zucchini
 
platytudes said:
Interestingly, corn doesn't seem to cause any problem - I've sometimes fed my goldfish kernels of fresh corn.
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Is corn even good for fish? It's not good for rabbits or rodents or even that good for chickens.
 
zuchinni in my tank is gobbled up so fast by my bn. i swear he doesn't go any further than 5 inches away from the slice until it's all gone, lol.
 
Honestly if the plecs want to eat the veggy you offer them,a normal size piece should be gone overnight.Dont leave it in there more then overnight if you dont see sizable amounts of it eaten.
 
I put slices of cucumbers in, drop in brocolie, cauliflower, and green beans. They are always gone by morning, and my BNs will sit on top of the cukes and slap their tails at anything trying to grab a bite. So I learned to spread them around so everyone could get their fair share.
 
I've left pieces of raw cucumber in my tanks for 3+ days without noticing any ill effects. my pleco usually doesn't get the chance to eat the whole piece because once the otos find it the whole piece is devoured within hours. one thing that I've found helpful is scraping the seeds out of the cucumber with a spoon, otherwise it seems like they always end up floating around my tank and getting stuck to the filter intake
 
I would switch to zucchini since it's more nutritious. It's also got a lower water content than cucumers so I think it will last a bit longer in the tank. For adults I don't nuke the zuchinni, just scrape some of the surface seeds off and place in the tank on forks in the substrate. For young plecos, you have to blanch it or nuke it some to soften it up, and I leave it in 2 days max. The adults pretty much clean up the raw zucchini overnight with a little help from the SAE's so I take it out of my 75G and 55G the next morning. With young plecos I leave it in till it gets to the point of falling apart, then scoop the mess that's left out. Watch your filters don't get too gunked up inside from it. The longer you leave leftovers in the tank, the more yucky the filters get.
 
Thanks for the input and advice, folks! I appreciate it very much :) :) :)
 
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