Who rinses food?

eskimo44 · 05-16-2005, 09:20 PM

I was just wonder how many of your rinse your frozen food with ro/di? I read that it will help lower phosphates? Also, if i do not feed my tank for a while will that lower phosphates and nitrates? I do not have any fish in right now, but i do have a cleaner shrimp. Do i need to feed or spot feed the cleaner shrimp? My nitrates are at 10ppm right now i want them to be 0. Will more flow lower nitrates? Do my nitrates go up everytime i add something to me tank? If i do not add anything for a while will my nitrates fall? Sorry just a lot of questions tonight.

Frogbone · 05-16-2005, 09:38 PM

I do not rinse my food at all. Too much work. I just drop it in walk away.
10ppm of Nitrates is kinda high. How long has your tank been cycling ?
Flow won't make a difference, it's teh conversion of Nitrates into Co2 that lowers them.
Live Rock and biological filtration shoudld take care of Nitrates.
I don't know what else you have in that tank but just a cleaner shrimp should only require a minimum of food.
I have never thought of spot feding mine. They get whatever they can scavenge.

As far as the other question I really don't know. Your tank might just not be mature enough yet...

the_colonel · 05-16-2005, 09:45 PM

I do not rinse my food either, however I do feed my cleaner shrimp. I just put a pinch of flake food in my fingers and stick my hand in the tank. The cleaner shrimp crawl all over my hand and pick the food out of my fingers. Very little waste, they get almost all the food.

Irenicus · 05-16-2005, 09:48 PM

I rinse the cocktail shrimp I feed my snowflake eel. I think I heard somewhere that they spray them with phosphate... I don't know if it's true or not, but it's easy to rinse so it's no big deal to rinse the shrimp.

Graham · 05-16-2005, 10:15 PM

I always thaw it in RO, mix it up (allow it to separate) and let it sit for about 20 minutes. Letely I've been soaking it in vitamins for a few hours as well.

the_colonel · 05-17-2005, 10:41 AM

Barry: Have you ever tried the feeze-dried shrimp? You can get it at the LFS, its in a pink can. Back when I had a snowflake, he loved it.

Graham, (or others): Why thaw it in RO water? I use water from my tank. Is there a problem with using tank water to thaw your food?

Frogbone · 05-17-2005, 10:50 AM

You don't want to put THAT water in the tank

Irenicus · 05-17-2005, 11:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by the_colonel

Barry: Have you ever tried the feeze-dried shrimp? You can get it at the LFS, its in a pink can. Back when I had a snowflake, he loved it.

I'll have to try that.

AnemicOak · 05-17-2005, 11:21 AM

I've always read that soaking the food with RO/DI & rinsing it is a good precaution against phosphate. At least I've read that's what to do for frozen food. I don't know that it'd make a difference with flake which is very high in phosphate.

Frogbone · 05-17-2005, 12:34 PM

What do you guys mean by rinsing in RO water ? If the frozen food thaws it falls apart into small pieces. If you run it through a screen then you lose all the small particles that would be beneficial to other inhabitants.
Also I can't see why rinsing would get the phosphates out of the food.

I think it's much about nothing really but if someone has a good explanation I'd love to hear it

AnemicOak · 05-17-2005, 12:43 PM

I don't think it would get the phosphates out of the food itself. When I've thawed food the water kinda has an oil slick look to it. Maybe they're saying there are phosphates in this "slick"? Not sure. Just read it a bunch of places.

Really I think it's probably 100 times less of an issue than folks overfeeding anyway.

trodder · 05-17-2005, 12:45 PM

I'm kinda with Wolfgang on this one... granted you are dumping excess crap into the tank by just dropping the frozen food in... my method is using tank water to thaw it and then dump the whole lot in. When that is done you can definately see the oily mess that could have been somewhat avoided by thawing it in some RO then dumping the RO and then feeding the tank. However as stated don't we then take away some of the beneficial small pieces that the coral would consume?? Hopefully your skimmer will make up the difference in the oily mess that comes with it.

AnemicOak · 05-17-2005, 12:50 PM

Here's a good Phosphate thread. There's info in there about different types of food & phosphates. Not sure it really addresses the stuff here (haven't read through it all yet), but it looks like a good read in case anyone's interested.
http://www.thereeftank.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=28107

Like I said, just passing on what I'd read. Don't have enough experience to know if it's right or not at this point.

eskimo44 · 05-17-2005, 01:31 PM

Thats the thread i read when i started this thread, i wanted to see how many people did rinse their food with RO. I tried it last night and most of the small brine went right thru my fine net.

kjdeut · 05-17-2005, 01:36 PM

I have never rinsed my food. I simply thaw it in tank water and let it set for a short time before I feed it to the tank.

Ken