Is Spinach bad for fish?

Posted by Sarah on April 11, 2008

After Jeff posted a recipe for a homemade fish food on the Northern Lights Aquatics Fish Forums, one of the members asked him to do his research before he posted recipes because spinach was bad for fish.

Since I’ve been browsing fish forums I’ve heard that spinach was bad for fish several times, but I’ve never seen any studies saying why spinach was bad for fish.

I’ve only seen people saying don’t use spinach because someone else told me it was bad for fish, but I never really looked into whethre or not spinach was bad for fish until I read that post on our forum.

I looked and looked online, and in scientific journals, and I couldn’t find any concrete proof that said that spinach was bad for fish, or that it wasn’t bad.

While I was looking I did find out that Ocean Nutrition uses Spinach in several of it’s frozen food formulas.

We currently feed our marine fish Ocean Nutrition Formula One and Formula Two Flake and Pellet foods, and although they don’t have spinach in them, they were highly recommended when I was researching the best type of food to feed our marine fish.

I knew that they wouldn’t be so highly recommended if the company intentionally put items that were bad for fish in the fish food, so I decided to email Ocean Nutrition, and see what they knew about spinach being good or bad for fish food.

I was fortunate enough to get a response from Scot Kohler, Vice President of Sales, North America for Ocean Nutrition, who was unable to find any reference that spinach was bad, except for the fact that the oxalic acid in the spinach might bind with the calcium.

He also noted that many authorities within the fish keeping hobby, and many public aquariums feed their fish spinach.

Although I won’t be feeding my fish spinach any time soon because I don’t make my own fish food, and because Jeff doesn’t like spinach, so we don’t buy it, I would feel comfortable feeding spinach to my fish, and feeding fish foods that contain spinach to my fish.

As with anything that I put into the tank if I noticed that the fish were acting wierd after I fed them spinach I would stop feeding them spinach.

Scott was nice enough to allow me to quote him on the forums, and you can read his reply to me at Ocean Nutrition’s Response to spinach being bad for fish.

Do you feed your fish spinach?

Do you make your own fish food? If so I’d love to have the recipe!

Who knows, I might even try it.