Do you refrigerate or just leave the thawed food sitting for 10-14 days? That seems insane. I've accidently left food in tank water thawed in open jar on top of tank just overnight and it stinks the next day lol.
How long is frozen Hikari food good for after thawed?
- Thread starter tbone28
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If I put a jar of food with tank water in my fridge. Cindy would leave me. I barely get away with having the frozen food in the freezer. I have to put it with my frozen junk foods away from hers. Ya she's a little bit of a germaphobe lol. I have to wash my hands before touching her lot of the time because she knows I've been doing fish stuff all day lol.
Jay Hemdal
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First - we need to differentiate between gel diets and other prepared, frozen foods with binders versus whole seafood items like mysids and brine shrimp. The latter is more prone to losing nutrients through over-rinsing.
The timing hasn't been studied to the point of tracking down a finite time frame. If you air thaw and then add the food to the tank, it is rinsing in tank water for mere seconds. If you toss in a frozen cube of food and the fish feed on it as it thaws, likewise, the rinsing is minimal. If you put the food in a glass of water, wait five minutes (or more), pour off the rinse water and feed - that's where you can start running into issues.
Jay
OK, so a noob question: I'm trying to use frozen foods rather than pellets because the hive mind on the interweb has told me I'm less likely to overfeed. However, the same hive mind often states that you'll drive up your phosphate level if you don't rinse your frozen food.
Is this just a case of poor information, or is there some nuance that I'm not seeing?
I've been feeling a bit guilty that I don't rinse my frozen food, but it seemed a bit daft to try to rinse out 1/2 a cube of mysis shrimp. However, I do thaw it in 15-20ml of RODI before pouring it in the tank, so apparently I am rinsing it and then throwing the backwash in the tank as well.
Is this just a case of poor information, or is there some nuance that I'm not seeing?
I've been feeling a bit guilty that I don't rinse my frozen food, but it seemed a bit daft to try to rinse out 1/2 a cube of mysis shrimp. However, I do thaw it in 15-20ml of RODI before pouring it in the tank, so apparently I am rinsing it and then throwing the backwash in the tank as well.
Jay Hemdal
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OK, so a noob question: I'm trying to use frozen foods rather than pellets because the hive mind on the interweb has told me I'm less likely to overfeed. However, the same hive mind often states that you'll drive up your phosphate level if you don't rinse your frozen food.
Is this just a case of poor information, or is there some nuance that I'm not seeing?
I've been feeling a bit guilty that I don't rinse my frozen food, but it seemed a bit daft to try to rinse out 1/2 a cube of mysis shrimp. However, I do thaw it in 15-20ml of RODI before pouring it in the tank, so apparently I am rinsing it and then throwing the backwash in the tank as well.
Sure - rinsing frozen food will reduce phosphate levels, but other nutrients are washed away at the same time.
Jay
I refrigerate during thawing and keep it refrigerated until its all gone. Depending on if my wife feeds or I feed, it lasts between 10-14 days.
@Jay Hemdal, thanks for clearing it up.
I like the use of "hive mind", it insinuates that it doesn't matter if the information is true or not, but that it's perceived by the collective to be correct.
tbone28
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Your examples do not represent what I asked. But your 3rd scenario is the most similar, minus the pouring of rinse water. I use tank water to thaw and as soon as it's thawed, I dump the whole thing into the tank. This was the basis of my initial question regarding timing as I don't see much of a difference between doing this and just air thawing and feeding the tank where food that is not immediately eaten is floating around the water column for upwards of 10 minutes.
I didn't make that up, a friend of mine started saying that and I glommed onto it for the same reason you like it.
I actually never thought of Hive Mind as being mob mentality like it sounds like you're implying.
To me, hive mind is the collective wisdom of humans. These forums are a perfect example of the hive mind. By accessing thousands of peoples knowledge and experiences we have a better chance at finding the best methods and truths. This is how I've always used the term. Googling now, there are some references of 'group think' like you mention, but that's not the common use of the phrase in the tech or financial industries that I work in.
The hive mind can be related to free market, price discovery, efficient market hypothesis, etc. This is why it's important that governments don't try to control or set prices, you need the free market, or hive mind to come to consensus. In finance it makes the most sense because the stakes are highest.
Interesting point, I'm not familiar with any of these terms outside of simply applying the sum of the individual words and occasionally hearing them in discussion. When I thought of "hive mind" it stopped at the notion that everyone thinks and acts one way in an effort of achieving a common goal. Not necessarily dissecting whether or not information that was acted upon was factual.
The way I regard "group think" moves more in the realm of a collective conclusion with bias embedded, but with percieved logic at the center.
"Mob mentality" seems a bit more aggressive, as to force collective conclusion not necessarily for the greater good, more to get every one in line to think one way.
None of which fits the criteria of how forums can bubble certain trends and ideas to the surface. Perhaps there is a 2 word phrase that encompasses how a group latches onto popular ideas based on delivery and feeling over all else and how it later becomes accepted by the masses as dogma.
Ya good points
And we definitely do see trends emerge that don't always have the best logic behind them. Maybe a popular person makes a video on it, or the concept has a cool or logical feeling catchy story behind it, but in reality doesn't work out the way it seems like it should.
Trying to think of some examples.
One example that comes to mind is a lot of people used to say (and still do to lesser extent) that if you have algae problems it's because your nutrients are too high, but over time it seems many people are moving away from this narrative. I know that I personally have had crazy GHA forests with low to undetectable nitrates and phosphates (it would grow to 6inch tall within 2 weeks of cleaning) . For me the answer that worked was manual scrubbing all of the GHA down with scrubber tool, increasing snails to eat it when it's short, and adding ton of tangs that will eat anything that makes it past the short stage that snails like.
Lol we're veering off of the topic of frozen food thawing though haha.
It's funny how threads go off the rails... hehe
I've adopted the saying, you don't have an algae problem, you have a herbivore problem.
But, that falls in line with what you also said about some talking head saying it and it rings true, so now I say it.
Does that fall under "tribal knowledge" or is that yet another tangent that doesn't quite explain what we're doing here? Haha...
Sorry guys, I'll stop.
I've adopted the saying, you don't have an algae problem, you have a herbivore problem.
But, that falls in line with what you also said about some talking head saying it and it rings true, so now I say it.
Does that fall under "tribal knowledge" or is that yet another tangent that doesn't quite explain what we're doing here? Haha...
Sorry guys, I'll stop.
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