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Getting goldfish to eat duckweed


Nick Y
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Hello everyone, thanks for reading this post. 
 

I have two fantails and one ranchu goldfish (all about 3”) in an outdoor pond. I have a heater in the pond so water temps are consistent around 73 degrees.  I feed solient green, hikari sinking excel, hikari goldfish excel, and goldfish bug bites.  I also feed frozen spirulina brine shrimp.  I want to encorporate more vegetables but so far haven’t had success in getting them to eat blanched lettuce.   I recently added duckweed hoping that the goldfish would eat that, but so far it looks as though they haven’t ate any after the duckweed was added about 5 days ago.  I usually feed once or twice a day in small amounts but since I’ve added the duckweed I am feeding every other day.  I don’t think temperature is an issue since I have the heater and the fish eat greedily when I use other foods.  
 

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get these young goldfish to eat the duckweed and/or blanched vegetables?  Is it just a matter of not feeding them until they eat it or do some goldfish just not eat duckweed? I don’t think the size of the duckweed is an issue because the pellets I feed are similar in size, if not bigger.  
 

Also, could it be that I need to feed some floating foods to train the goldfish to look more on the surface for food?  Reading all about bloat and goldfish, I have been reluctant to use floating foods although I know Corey has no issue with it. 
 

Thanks for any suggestions!

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I have a water garden full of goldfish and also full of duckweed. The goldfish are almost never fed by me, but they pretty much ignore the duckweed. (Either that or it grow so fast it looks like they ignore it.) The goldfish seem happy though and reproduce in the water garden so they're doing fine. 

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Hi everyone, thanks for the input!  I will fast the goldfish for a few days to see if that entices them to eat.  I also bought some of the hikari cichlid excel that floats.  If they don’t begin eating the duckweed after a few days, I’ll try the floating excel to see if that helps them to find it and start eating it 

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For the sake of closing the loop on this thread for anyone looking into this issue in the future, I wanted to post what my experience was after implementing the suggestions posted to the thread. 
 

Unsurprisingly, the suggestions offered by the other forum members were spot on and effective, especially when combined.  I fasted my goldfish for three days, ensured water temperatures were in the mid 70s and then interspersed floating food in with the duckweed.  The goldfish caught the scent of the food and consumed the duckweed while they ate the floating food. From there, they continued heavily eating the duckweed to the point that it was gone the next day. 
 

I have since added more duckweed to the pond without mixing additional food with it. The pictures below show the amount of duckweed consumed from one afternoon to the next.   They are hooked on eating it now. 
 

The food that worked for me was the Hikari Cichlid Excel—per Cory’s suggestions in his multiple goldfish videos.

 

Thank you to everyone that provided input. I hope this helps someone in the future.  

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CF14B880-AD34-4E00-9CDE-4283E6E3A7D5.jpeg

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