How to Make a Cucumber Sink
Cucumber is good food for aquarium catfish and plecostomus. They love it and it provides variety in their diet. In fact, most of the fish in your aquarium, especially clown loaches and cichlids, will feed on fresh cucumber if it is available. However, cucumber floats in water and the fish the cucumber is intended for are bottom feeders. Therefore, you have to devise a way to sink the cucumber to the bottom of the tank, making it easy for your fish to get at.
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Wash a cucumber well in lots of clean water. Dry with paper towels. It is important to remove anything on the surface such as wax that can adversely affect your aquarium.
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Slice a piece off the cucumber about ½ inch thick.
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Stick a cucumber slice on the end of a stainless steel fork. Do not use a fork made of any other material because it could leach harmful substances into the water. The fork provides the weight to sink the cucumber slice. There are also commercial sinking implements that you can use to impale and weight the cucumber.
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Open your aquarium cover and place the weighted cucumber slice on the bottom of the tank where your fish can easily reach it.
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Observe the fish as they feed. Remove the fork when they have finished eating the cucumber. If they do not finish it and lose interest, remove uneaten portions of cucumber immediately so that it does not contaminate the tank.
References
Tips
- Feed zucchini to your fish and aquatics using the same steps for sinking cucumber.
- If the fork becomes lost in the gravel, remove it when you next clean your aquarium.
Writer Bio
Karren Doll Tolliver holds a Bachelor of English from Mississippi University for Women and a CELTA teaching certificate from Akcent Language School in Prague. Also a photographer, she records adventures by camera, combining photos with journals in her blogs. Her latest book, "A Travel for Taste: Germany," was published in 2015.
Photo Credits
- Photodisc/Photodisc/Getty Images
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