Fish eating silk plants?

Castro235

Hey everyone, I just noticed this today, but I'm assuming it's been going on for awhile.

I have some silk plants in my tank(from a pet store intended for aquarium use) and today I noticed what looked like a big blob of light blue mold growing on the tip of one of the plants, I looked a little closer, and realized that it's actually the plastic that is molded as the stems/veins under the leaves.

I would say they probably ate at least 1/2" of the silk leaves in certain places, I would assume that fish or shrimp eating string would probably be a bad thing, so i took them out and put them in a cycling tank(in hopes that maybe the bacteria on them could help the tank cycling while there's no fish in it)

I have three small goldfish, and one amano shrimp, and a bunch of trumpet snails.

Anyone else had this problem, and should I do anything to make sure nothing bad happens to the fish as a result from this?


Thanks

heartagramette

Ive had this problem too. But i noticed they had stringy poo. so i was looking for what could cause this in their diet and then i find they are eating the silk plant in the very back of my tank . it didn't hurt them as far as i saw and i left it in there for awhile after that until i noticed they wouldn't stop eating it lol. so i took it out just in case it could be harmful. Hope that helps a little.

Castro235

Yeah, I ended up just taking it out, not sure if it hurt anyone, but I took it out awhile ago when I made this thread, and everyone seems just fine. Guessing the shrimp was to blame since he was the newest, and he spent alot of time eating algae off of the plants, but I'll never know lol.

Byron

Goldfish will naturally eat plants, so I would not use silk plants just in case. Some live stem plants allowed to float might give them some additional nourishment.