Frozen Food

[Stingray]

Originally Posted by Tangster

No its not to cold , Are you rinsing these in a net with R/O water ? Tell uoi waht add a little of the juice they are packed in to a PO4 and NO3 test see what you get .. I'd get away from frozen meats and get them on a good blanced enriched flake food thats all we feed and have for yrs.

Once the cube is thawed out, i have not been rinseing it no, but i will now i know what should be done, thank you, & i'm not talking about re-freezeing the leftover, i'm saying just put it in the top of the fridge to keep it cool, tried them with flake food bought a big carton of it, what a waste they will not touch it, but my cleaner shrimp loves it lol...cheers already guys and ty tangster for the essay, well explained...

[rayjay]

Yes, frozen foods have phosphates in them, but so do flake foods, and, just about any food you can mention. By feeding flake foods, you are not eliminating the addition of phosphates to your tanks. Be wary of statements like "no phosphates added". That just means none added. Phosphates are one of the most common things that can be found in any food. Unfortunately, phosphates are also added to foods as a preservative. By rinsing the frozen foods you can wash away these phosphates that have been added to the packaging fluids.
My primary food that I use is spirulina flake foods. However, I also use frozen foods as in brine/mysis, as well as gut loaded live foods.
There is a misconception about the value of brine shrimp as a food that stems from the differences in reporting terminology. For instance, protein in frozen brine shrimp is reported in terms of "wet" weight percent including all packaging fluids as well. Flake food protein is reported in terms of "dry" weight percentage.
To properly compare, one needs to report on common terms, both dry or both wet. i.e. when you soak flake food, it takes on water making it many times the weight it is when dry. Reporting values on wet weight then means that on "wet" weight reporting, the protein level is very much lower than reported in dry weight percentage.
Because I don't have access to wet weight percentages of dry food, and I do have access to values of both as dry weight, I can compare them that way.
At the LFS, one can find flake foods where they range in the 45 to 48% protein range. Also, the USDA reports pure spirulina dry at 57% protein.
The Artemia Reference Centre at the University of Ghent,via the United Nations site on Live Foods for Aquaculture, reports brine shrimp protein content of newborn nauplii as 42 to 47% protein in dry weight percent and juveniles and adults at 49 to 62% protein. These figures are for Great Salt Lake artemia where I believe the majority of fozen brine probably come from.
Now, from my perspective, because all foods have varying strong points, I personally feed my tanks a variety of foods to take advantage of the strengths of each.

References:
USDA SR 19 Seach, look for spirulina, dry.

LIVE FOODS FOR AQUACULTURE-CLICK HERE AND SCROLL DOWN TO SECTION 4 ARTEMIA

[Stingray]

Originally Posted by rayjay

Yes, frozen foods have phosphates in them, but so do flake foods, and, just about any food you can mention. By feeding flake foods, you are not eliminating the addition of phosphates to your tanks. Be wary of statements like "no phosphates added". That just means none added. Phosphates are one of the most common things that can be found in any food. Unfortunately, phosphates are also added to foods as a preservative. By rinsing the frozen foods you can wash away these phosphates that have been added to the packaging fluids.
My primary food that I use is spirulina flake foods. However, I also use frozen foods as in brine/mysis, as well as gut loaded live foods.
There is a misconception about the value of brine shrimp as a food that stems from the differences in reporting terminology. For instance, protein in frozen brine shrimp is reported in terms of "wet" weight percent including all packaging fluids as well. Flake food protein is reported in terms of "dry" weight percentage.
To properly compare, one needs to report on common terms, both dry or both wet. i.e. when you soak flake food, it takes on water making it many times the weight it is when dry. Reporting values on wet weight then means that on "wet" weight reporting, the protein level is very much lower than reported in dry weight percentage.
Because I don't have access to wet weight percentages of dry food, and I do have access to values of both as dry weight, I can compare them that way.
At the LFS, one can find flake foods where they range in the 45 to 48% protein range. Also, the USDA reports pure spirulina dry at 57% protein.
The Artemia Reference Centre at the University of Ghent,via the United Nations site on Live Foods for Aquaculture, reports brine shrimp protein content of newborn nauplii as 42 to 47% protein in dry weight percent and juveniles and adults at 49 to 62% protein. These figures are for Great Salt Lake artemia where I believe the majority of fozen brine probably come from.
Now, from my perspective, because all foods have varying strong points, I personally feed my tanks a variety of foods to take advantage of the strengths of each.

References:
USDA SR 19 Seach, look for spirulina, dry.

LIVE FOODS FOR AQUACULTURE-CLICK HERE AND SCROLL DOWN TO SECTION 4 ARTEMIA

Well said!!!

[rayjay]

Originally Posted by Stingray

i'm not talking about re-freezeing the leftover, i'm saying just put it in the top of the fridge to keep it cool, tried them with flake food bought a big carton of it, what a waste they will not touch it

I forgot to suggest that when removing frozen food for thawing, and not using it all, why not shave off what you need and return the remainder to the freezer? Oh yeah, rinse before tanking.
Personally, I don't want any degradation of food that I put in the tank and degradation starts as soon as the thaw begins. I don't buy the cubes as it's cheaper and easier to buy flat packs which I can break up to appropriate size easily.
As for flake food, it will probably just take some time to acclimate the fish to this new food form.
With the exception of my copperband, even my butterflys have been acclimated to eat spirulina flake food and they go after it voraciously.
It just means vacuuming out remaining particles that are not eaten until they get on to the food. Feed some along with the foods they normally eat, reducing their prefered foods until you have mostly or all of the flake food.
Once they get on to it, you can alternate.

[luvreefs23]

I alternate days, flake & pellets one day...the next day is frozen. Sometimes when i get lazy i feed pellet and flake more. I use a shot glass with some garlic guard and vita chem and soak a few shavings of my rods food in that with some mysis...let it sit for maybe 30 mins to an hour and extract 10ml out of my tank with a baby syringe. I add that to my food right before i dump the shot glass in the tank. Im slowly weening the fish off the frozen to help eliminate nitrates further. I maybe wanna feed em frozen 2 times a week...reason ive been using frozen as much as i have was to keep the fish fat and immune system built up cause i had a ich outbreak when i got my hippo tang.

[Stingray]

ok will try alternating cheers guys...