Pre-portion Food to prevent over feeding

Discussion in 'Fish Food' started by OnlyTono, Jun 29, 2014.

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  1. OnlyTono

    OnlyTono Spaghetti Worm

    Joined:
    Feb 9, 2013
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    190
    Location:
    Glendale AZ
    I will be leaving my tank in the hands of others for the next 10-11 days, and I don’t have any one that is truly an experienced reef keeper to leave it to. So I devised a way to keep them from over feeding and I just wanted to share.

    I feed my fish twice a day with a mixture of Frozen Mysis, Cyclopes, and brine shrimp. Feeding this type of food, it’s extremely easy to overfeed the tank, and if that happened for 10 days, it could turn out to be a disaster.

    I decided to pre-portion the foods, thaw it out, mix it and then re-freeze it in little single serving cup.

    WP_20140629_003.jpg
    I start by weighing the frozen Mysis into individual cups. Each cup contains 3-4 grams of unthawed food.
    WP_20140629_002.jpg

    Next I fill each cup with RODI and thaw it out. I also thaw out two cudes of Brine and a few chucks of the Cyclopses in a separate cup.
    WP_20140629_004.jpg

    WP_20140629_006.jpg Then, drain each cup one at a time into a net and place the food back into it’s cup. After draining the extra liquid, each cup has about 2-3 gram of Mysis.
    WP_20140629_005.jpg

    I add in a few drop of the Brine and Cyclopses mixture.
    WP_20140629_007.jpg WP_20140629_008.jpg
    Finally, I add in a little RO/DI water which brings the total weight to around 8-10grams. I then pop them all into the freezer.
    WP_20140629_009.jpg


    Now when my tank sitter comes in to feed the fish, they just have to simply float a single cup on the water for a few minutes, then drop in the food.

    WP_20140629_010.jpg


    I've been testing this out for that past week or so and it's so easy, I might just start doing to all the time to make it easy on me too :)
     
    Last edited: Jun 29, 2014
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  3. Kevin_E

    Kevin_E Giant Squid

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    Florida
    Nice idea. I assume you figured out how much food needed to feed your tank without causing an algae outbreak and didn't just come up with an arbitrary number?

    Do you resue the containers?
     
  4. OnlyTono

    OnlyTono Spaghetti Worm

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    Ya - I figured out a while ago about how much to feed the tank. I used to just thaw out what I needed each day. But doing it this way makes it really easy, especially when I'm in a hurry.

    I'll re-use the containers sometimes, but only after rinsing and drying them really well.
     
  5. Pdxile

    Pdxile Coral Banded Shrimp

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    Oregon Coast
    Neat for homemade blender mush. Where did you find the containers?
     
  6. OnlyTono

    OnlyTono Spaghetti Worm

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    Location:
    Glendale AZ
    I found the containers at the grocery store - usually in the plastic cup and utensil isle. The work pretty good and seal pretty tight