Rinsing / thawing frozen food - questions

Hey all,

I have seen it mentioned here numerous times now about the practice of rinsing / thawing your frozen food in RO/DI water first to remove phosphates and other possible preservatives.

Here are my questions (some may sound silly - but I have a phosphate problem right now and want to be sure i fully understand the logic and practice):

1. Originally i had been "hand feeding" my fish by holding a piece of non-thawed frozen food in the tank. Is this actually bad for your fish?

2. Thawing / rinsing your frozen stuff in RO / DI makes sense but then do you have to try to strain it then to remove the rinse water? when stuff like rod's food thaws - it breaks into tiny pieces etc etc...I dont want to lose important food particles in the process.

If anyone can help clarify this to me - i would appreciate it. Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge with me!

 

I also will hand feed this way. I don't think its Bad for the fish

You need to strain it with a net or something or it is worthless to rinse. You need to get rid of the water in it.

If you are using flake food..that may be your source of phosphates.
Just do a google search ..."flake food high in phosphates"

 

Thank you - that was sort of my opinion about the rinse thing too - the point of stuff like Rod's Food are all the tiny microparticles etc that are in it.

I posted a thread about my current phosphate problem in the chemistry section of the forums - which led me to posting this thread to be sure i understand the rinse / thaw thing. I posted my reading on the chemistry thread as well as my course of action - because i want to confirm with the folks here that I am on the right track to solving this.

I feed Ocean Nutrition Flakes - i am going to read to jar right now.

Thanks for the reply. This phosphate thing has me feeling terrible and I want to fix it asap.

 

If hand feeding frozen, you are putting in phosphate (if present) since no thaw and rinsing was done.

It is not worthless to rinse by letting the food thaw in Ro/DI and then siphon out the water. If you want to use netting fine but it really doesn't do any better of a job.

Yes, some flakes have phosphate. Using the flakes sparingly, both in quantity of the feeding and actual feeding of the flakes per month are the keys to using flake food.

 

Rod pre-rinses all of the seafood prior to mixing and then freezing. You don't need to rinse this particular brand. In fact, since some of the microparticles are in there on purpose to feed corals too, rinsing would ruin this particular food.

 

thank you to all for the great feedback. this is exactly the feedback i had hoped to get.

Don't get me wrong - i am certain that i am to be blamed for overfeeding - but that is easily rectified. My concern was "how" i was feeding possibly augmenting the issue.

This puts me at ease and is useful information to others in a similar position!

i love these forums

 

I dont rinse my frozen cubes, that takes too much time.


luna

 

Good info Curt, nice to know.

 

You can remove the excess liquid phosphates from frozen rather easily. I used to let them sit in a cup of water until it was completely thawed, then stir it up. Let the food fall to the bottom, and pour out the water. I could visually see the gunky mess suspended near the top, so I knew it was a big help in decreasing added gunk to the water column. You can rinse it a couple of times to be sure, then i let it sit in the saltwater just to make sure they weren't getting a big jolt of freshwater to their system. But that was probably being overly cautious.

Inwall is spot on, Rod's food is some of the best on the market for your tank.

 

I feed this: Ocean Nutrition Formula One RDF 3.5oz

an I jus cut a little piece off and put it in the tank is that bad