food rinsing?

C

clownkeeper

I have been battling water parameters for a while all around instability and poor quality . In my research I have seen it mentioned that thawing frozen cube food in ro/di and straining after is a method that is commonly used . Could someone explain to me why this is better . My thoughts would be that only solids big enough to be eaten would go into the tank and leave the "juices" for lack of a better phrase out of the tank. But on the other hand wouldnt things like corals and other filter feeders benefit from the "juices" that get added when you throw the whole cube in ? Or am i overthinking the reason for the straining entirely ?
 
Most of the fluids in the cubes are just RO mixed with preservatives which are typically phosphate derived. When you rinse and strain it removes the majority. As far as filter feeders go you should use phytoplankton or something like that but any bits of food that would be beneficial to your corals will still break off as the fish take bites and break up the solid pieces. I don't know if you've noticed it but if you watch your fish eat they tend to spit back out tiny bits which would really be the only part of frozen food that would be beneficial to filter feeders whether you strain or not. Does that help?


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When I feed frozen, this is exactly the method I use...Thaw in rodi and strain.....Frozen cubes of Brine, mysis, spirulina etc...all contain roughly 90% moisture if you read the labels...That's just a bunch of nasty nitrate filled gunk that I personally don't want to dump into my system. Some will say you don't have to, but IMO the "moisture" does nothing positive for fish or coral. I would also mention that I only do this with the cheaper frozen cubes like the SFB of H2Olife brands. When I feed Rod's Food or LRS Reef Frenzy I do just the opposite....I thaw in tank water and Selco Boost and pour it in without straining... Those types of foods contain a variety of sizes ranging from large chunks down to micron size particles so that everything in the tank gets a meal.
 
I actually JUST prepped my food for the rest of the month. I thawed some Marine Fusion with some PE Mysis, then rinsed it twice with tank water and a strainer, then when I rinsed it a third time into a bowl it still left quite a bit of tiny food particles so I saved them. I figure that MOST if not all of the "bad stuff" has been washed out. I then let the tiny tiny particles settle out in the bottom, sucked them up, and put them in separate ice cube trays for coral food. No need to waste. I then add some Multi-v and garlic and just a bit of RO water to the clump of drained fish food, mixed it up, and separated it into little ice cube trays.

I started doing this mostly because I was tired of cutting the frozen food cubes into smaller pieces before I thawed it... a whole cube is WAY to much for my 40b.
 
Thank you gentlemen for your prompt replies . So i could have and most likely was addint nitrates and phosphates to my tank by not rinsing my food prior to use . I recently tried frozen 2.0 its a frozen food that stays in a gel form is it also filled with phosphatey goodness?
 
Here's all you will ever need to know about Phosphates in the aquarium written by Randy Holmes-Farley, Ph.D. In his opinion it's not worth the effort to rinse. http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2012/3/chemistry

Rinsing Foods and the Effect on Phosphate

Now that we have some information on the phosphate in foods, we can critically examine the concern that many aquarists have about foods, and specifically their rinsing of frozen foods before use. A typical test you see is someone taking a cube of fish food, thawing it, and putting it into a half cup of water. They then test that water for phosphate and find it "off the charts". Let's assume that means 1 ppm phosphate, which would give a very dark blue color in many phosphate tests. Bear in mind this is a thought problem, not an actual measured value, but it is typical of what people think the answer is.

Is that a lot of phosphate? Well, there are two ways to think of the answer.

The first way is as a portion of the total phosphate in that food. A half cup of water at 1 ppm (1 mg/L) phosphate contains a total of 0.12 mg of phosphate. A cube of Formula 2 contains about 11.2 mg of phosphate. So the hypothetical rinsing step has removed about 1 percent of the phosphate in that food. Not really worthwhile, in my opinion, but that decision is one every aquarist can make for themselves.

The second way to look at this rinsing is with respect to how much it reduces the boost to the aquarium phosphate concentration. Using the same calculation as above of 0.12 mg of phosphate, and adding that to 100 gallons total water volume, we find that phosphate that was rinsed away would have boosted the "in tank" phosphate concentration by 0.12 mg/379 L = 0.0003 ppm. That amount washed away does not seem significant with respect to the "in tank" target level of about 50-100 times that level (say, 0.015 to 0.03 ppm), nor does it seem significant relative to the total amount of phosphate actually added each day in foods (which is perhaps 50-1000 times as much, based on input rates from Table 4. Again, the conclusion I make is that rinsing is not really worthwhile, in my opinion.
 
then the question does the juice contain enough proteins that go unused by inhabitants of the tank to cause the nutrient load to go up ?
 
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