Pros vs Cons: Frozen Fish Food vs Dry Fish Food

[rhdoug]

I use a variety of frozen foods that I buy in bulk. About once every 6-8 weeks, I break or chop it into pieces that are approximately the size of frozen cube foods, and put it into approximately 25-30 small (about 1/2 cup sized) tupperware containers and store them in the freezer. That way I have pre-made mixtures of food easily available all the time. One container of food will feed the tank (58 gal mixed reef, heavily stocked with softies, LPS, and sun corals) for 2 or 3 days. I squirt tank water into the container with a baster and keep it in the fridge when not feeding. I use the baster to feed the tank as well, usually aiming it in the general direction of the various sun coral colonies. In addition, I occasionally add some flake food, golden pearls, or pellets to the mix while it thaws. I have been using this method for many years.

 

[impur]

I feed both, but probably 75% of my fish's diet consists of frozen foods. I give my fish 3 cubes frozen foods per day, usually a blend of spirulina enriched brine, mysis, krill, and plankton. About every other day I soak it with Selcon before feeding. I overfeed a bit to be sure my emerald crabs and pep shrimp get food too, plus I like to think some corals grab some of the food as well.

I feed flakes when I'm lazy, usually only once a week or so. My fish will eat anything though. But my biggest complaint about using dry foods is that so much of it floats on the surface then goes down the overflow.

 

[rhdoug]

To remedy the floating food problem, pre-soak it for a few minutes in a cup of tank water, then use a baster to get it below the surface. Works like a charm.

 

[steamer51]

I think my fish prefer frozen but they eat dry food with the same vigor. I think my Cardinals prefer dry. I have no overflow/sump or skimmer so when I feed dry there is a lot of buildup floating on the surface that I skim off when I do a water change. No buildup with frozen at all.

 

[impur]

To remedy the floating food problem, pre-soak it for a few minutes in a cup of tank water, then use a baster to get it below the surface. Works like a charm.

Yah its just when I feed flake its because I don't want to go thru all that lol

 

[Freddie801]

I use both just to mix it up. Instant Oceans Marine Chips have always worked for my fish. They somewhat like the Spectrum but its hit in miss. I picked up some of the reef nutrion's nano pellets and they seem to do better than spectrum. For the most part I stick with frozen food. I mix my own stuff quite often. Usually a mysis, brine, and krill mix from frozen with some garlic extreme from Kent or I will mix in a little Rod's Foods which I couldn't be happier with. I also have a reservoir that I breed live rotifers and copepods in and run with an ATO pump on a timer to auto feed my tank.

 

[Hinecken]

I don't know what all the defrosting and rinsing is about. I pop out a cube, and feed it to my return pump. Doneski. I feed frozen 2 or 3 times a week, spectrum pellets and flakes the other days.

 

[rdevoe11]

I feed both. During the day, my tank gets auto-fed a mixture of dried mysis, plankton, and brine shrimp. When I get home from work they get Rogger's complete blend plus. I also toss in a little of the coral blend 2-3 times a week. I've never rinsed the frozen food, other than to defrost it a little so I can break it apart more easily. My 5 chromis really seem to love when one of my mp10s obliterates a small chunk of the Rogger's lol.

Feeding twice a day in a 40b may seem like a lot to some but I like to keep my chromis fat and happy to curb their potential aggression towards one another. My corals, inverts, bta, and gold stripe maroon clown havent complained yet! I do however, find myself cleaning my skimmer out a little more often and there's always a few small spots of cyano or diatoms, but when was the last time you dove/snorkeled a reef and didnt see ANY algae or cyano lol

 

[mothership.mantis]

I have 17 tanks both fresh and marine and I feed them all krill, less expensive to use one kind of food

 

[ReefFrenzy]

Rev did you start this thread a day after Reef-a-Palooza to get my feathers ruffled because I dumped those 800 samples of LRS Nori in your lap and said "Here pass these out"...LOL

There have been some good points raised supporting a case for both sides, but I think it comes down to one key factor when deciding which food to use:

Do your research and compare the dry foods and then also compare the frozen foods you intend to use. There are wide swings in quality of choices in both classes.

I have one popular pellet food and four of the the first five ingredients are wheat flour, soy flour, brewers yeast and corn starch. Does that make sense? Not to me, but those additives are needed to act as a binder for the pellet extrusion process. Contrast that label with the New Life Spectrum pellets which seems to have a much better array of ingredients. I actually use NLS when in a hurry or having someone tank sit for me.

I'm pretty confident the heat and or cold-press processes used to make flake and pelleted foods causes degradation of the amino acids and beneficial fatty acids so I would tilt the needle in favor of a quality frozen food if optimal nutrition is the goal.

Now on the frozen side there are HUGE variations in ingredients, freshness and quality of cubes and sheet foods out there. On one side of the equation you have popular cubed foods which often come to the US via container ships, then can sit at a distributor for months, which can leave them less than "fresh" when you get them home. This can result in less of a feeding response, not to mention the product inside the cube can begin to freezer burn or the fatty acids can oxidize if it has ever been permitted to freeze and thaw during transit through many points.

On the flip side folks who make their own foods at home, or a commercial "boutique food" like ours can have access to much fresher ingredients and deliver them to your home within a week of production. For example, when we get a weekly delivery of scallop, shrimp, perch and oysters this animals are live or were alive in the ocean less than a few days ago. This makes a HUGE difference with finicky eaters and also the freshness and diversity of many ingredients in one pack can offer MUCH more diverse nutrition than available from some mass produced sources. Not to mention the attention to detail and extra straining that only a "small batch" food maker provides results in a cleaner final product, as proven by many reports.

But don't take my word for it, renowned biologist Karen Brittain in Hawaii just named LRS the "first choice" food for her captive bred breeding program. (Think of the irony of living on an island and spending $200 for Fed Ex shipping alone for N. Carolina seafood...LOL)

You can read her blog post at the bottom where she discusses our probiotic foods: Rising Tide Conservation Updates: Larval Rearing of the Purple Mask Angelfish

The same results were mirrored by our friends in Texas who submitted the feeding video in their store of many species, including seahorses. I have yet to see a dry food work as well on getting newly acclimated fish to eat.

[video=youtube_share;UYP7t6Mkqhk]http://youtu.be/UYP7t6Mkqhk[/video]

I hear many folks always worried about PO4 and this is a valid concern, but people should understand ALL living organisms used in fish food ingredients have phosphorous in their tissue so it can never be totally eliminated. If it were the food would not be worth feeding! We address this issue in a brief text on our website.

Q: Are there Phosphates in your foods?

A: You betcha! There are phosphates in EVERY aquarium food that is worth feeding. The living marine animals such as shrimp, fish, oysters, etc. have phosphorus in their tissue, especially their bones and exoskeletons. I am not a miracle worker and able to eliminate them. Several food products on the market have "Contains No Phosphates!" printed on the label and it is an untrue, misleading statement. If the ingredient label has an animal listed, then it has phosphates! At LRS we strive to minimize any additional phosphates added to your tank by NOT using exoskeletons and filleting every fish by hand to strip the bones out. We rinse the heck out of all our basic seafood ingredients with several strainers and sieves. If you follow standard maintanence protocols, such as performing water changes, to balance nutrients added with nutrients exported, you should not experience any adverse effects using our foods.

We have numerous reports from hobbyists who state their nitrates and phosphate levels dropped after switching to our foods.


This article summarized some of the popular foods on the market by one of the most respected names in the hobby: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2012/3/chemistry


​What I explain to folks who email me seeking advice is that what ever food you choose to feed do not get stuck in a habit of only feeding one generic food week after week. Sure it can be done, but IMHO diversity of ingredients is a key factor for long term health. This statement is further bolstered by conversations with running public aquariums and also experts like Karen in Hawaii.

If you are following proper husbandry and feeding appropriately with a quality food than your PO4 should easily be manageable. Often times in a home aquarium in our quest for ultra low nutrients and minimizing algae we under feed which can have a deleterious effect on our fish.

I like to feed frozen and feed often and I don't rinse our foods. I have been doing so to our six SW systems with positive results since we started messing around with blends 2+ years ago.

 

[SeattleReef]

I use both. My Anthias won't eat dried food.

 

[Reef_Obsessed]

I feed frozen and dry...enriched frozen Brine and Mysis shrimp, flakes, and Sustainabile Aquatics pellets and my clowns accept it all with excitement. As for the rinsing questions with the frozen, I rinse everytime and have been for years with no issues

 

[Pete polyp]

Rods food is all I feed. Not only does it feed my fish but it feeds my entire tank.

+1. Every tiny bit of this food does not go to waste!

All flakes and frozen are not created equal. Some of both can be clean, and some of both can be loaded with phosphate.

 

[saltyhog]

I use both. Mainly Larrys, PE mysis and Nutramar Ova for frozen and NLS pellets for dry. I never rinse or strain my frozen food. Randy Holmes Farley doesn't think it's necessary or advantageous and I tend to believe what he says.

 

[shoelaceike]

I like pellets better....most frozen food has very little protein and seems to make a huge mess in the tank. NLS pellets seem to offer a ton of protein along with greens and vitamins.

Its also quite a bit easier to feed. I'm lucky that right now all my fish eat pellets....I do frozen once in a while but it always makes a mess....

When I get a cbb I will definitely have to feed frozen more often

 

[red reef]

I feed both. In just a week I got my pair of Orangespotted Filefish eating spectrum pellets which I was very happy about. My normal daily feeding per tank consists of:

2 cubes Mysis
2 "cubes" worth of Rod's Food
1 "cube" of Nutramar Ova
1 cube of Spirulina brine
1 cube of bloodworms
1 cube of cyclops
1 cube of Red Plankton

And throughout the day I toss in Spectrum Pellets when I walk past the tank.

how big of a tank do you have? and how many fish

 

[wpeterson]

What I explain to folks who email me seeking advice is that what ever food you choose to feed do not get stuck in a habit of only feeding one generic food week after week. Sure it can be done, but IMHO diversity of ingredients is a key factor for long term health. This statement is further bolstered by conversations with running public aquariums and also experts like Karen in Hawaii.

If you are following proper husbandry and feeding appropriately with a quality food than your PO4 should easily be manageable. Often times in a home aquarium in our quest for ultra low nutrients and minimizing algae we under feed which can have a deleterious effect on our fish.

I like to feed frozen and feed often and I don't rinse our foods. I have been doing so to our six SW systems with positive results since we started messing around with blends 2+ years ago.

I disagree that many reefers are underfeeding their fish, I've only seen the opposite in most tanks.

I agree with everything said so far here: all food (frozen or dried) contains phosphates and will cause increases in nitrates, otherwise you wouldn't be feeding your fish any helpful nutrients. Rinsing frozen food is an exercise in futility - the nutrients are inside the food, not in the water or on the surface.

 

[go29]

I personally feed both pellets (NLS) and Frozen food (LRS reef frenzy). In my experience (13 some years in the hobby now) I think its a common misconception that frozen food pollutes tanks ( @revhtree i have always heard the opposite of what you have, that frozen causes more nutrient build up... guess its who you talk to haha), and is rather simply because most frozen foods are higher in actual NUTRIENTS. I believe its easier to over feed a tank frozen food, and thus can lead to more high nutrient food on the bottom of the tank to break down, causing the build up of nitrogenous waste we have all come to hate at some point in the hobby. If you think about the fish digestive tract, then you will quickly come to realize just how tiny their stomach is, and thus they should be fed smaller (much smaller than most people, myself included feed) quantities multiple times a day. SO in conclusion, based off of what i was always told when i first started out, I feel like frozen food gets a bad rep simply because people tend to thaw a bunch out, and then squirt it in the tank, but that can predispose to lots of high nutrient food getting stuck in rock crevices etc and eventually lead to nitrogenous waste build up. Now I feel compelled to go on a little bit of a "rant" about feeding based off of some of the posts in the discussion above, just maybe offer a new way to think about feeding, and why I'm such a huge advocate for frozen foods that are composed of numerous things. I think about it this way:

Fish in the ocean consume varied diets of whatever unfortunate little shrimp pods,clams, worms etc they come across. These "food sources" usually are consuming tons of things off the reef, like algae and even smaller plankton etc. So our fish naturally get a lot of nutrients that in my opinion can't be reliable delivered in just one type of food (pellets for instance). Now I'm not saying that high quality pellets are bad, i feed NLS pellets regularly as a morning/mid-day meal to my fish all the time as they are easy and quick to feed, but I would argue with anyone that says they can be the only source of food for your reef. Larry with @ReefFrenzy can step in if I go off base here, but the reason I choose to start using his food was in the fact that it contains such a plethora of different, naturally occurring foods, and was shocked to learn it even included probiotics (i don't even buy those for myself haha). I try to feed his blend of frozen foods at least 4 days a week, as an effort to incorporate the much needed variety of nutrients fatty acids etc that our reef inhabitants require to thrive (not just live and put on weight)

Now I don't claim to be an expert in nutrition nor do I think i am, but just thinking from a medical standpoint here (currently a medical student) and all of the research we cover, it doesn't make sense to claim that processed foods can sustain our tank's inhabitants indefinitely. Now I'm not saying you cant have fish live for lots of years off just pellets, but hear me out..... I realize fish are not humans, but just correlating what medicine has begun to learn about human diets and nutrition, and the correlation with such things as colon cancer as one of many examples (high correlation to diet) and the importance of the natural bacterial flora of the gut, I would find it hard to believe that any person keeping a tank would tell me they live off of nothing but processed foods. Everyone knows the importance of a balanced die including those terrible "veggie things" and fiber, and thus if you know that a bad diet can predispose you to certain medical condition, I don't think its to far of a stretch to think that over time the same can be true of the reef inhabitants in our tanks.

All too often i hear fellow aquarists think that simply getting a fish to "put on weight" or "girth" means its healthy, and yes while it is a good sign that a fish is feeding well and has excess energy storages, I would have to disagree with the notion that it means the fish is perfectly healthy. I just point you back to my previous statements about human nutritional requirements. While we as individuals can live for a long time off of nothing but processed foods, (think back to my childhood of refusing to eat anything that didn't come with fries and a plastic toy) it doesn't mean we aren't predisposing ourselves to things like diabetes, hypertension, etc. So i guess the whole premise of this was to just state that if you truly want to achieve "health" for your inhabitants, it would only make sense that you would want to get a wide variety of nutrients (not just from processed sources) that will allow you the most chance for long term success.

I want to add that I am not attacking those that choose to feed only pellet, as again I also use NLS pellets as a means for easy feeding, and they are by and large full of quality ingredients. My whole point was just to think about long term health and its relation to your own diets, and then maybe contemplate what you throw into the tank ecosystem that we all so dearly love and care for. Happy reefing everyone !

 

[jameswetton2895]

I feed both. In just a week I got my pair of Orangespotted Filefish eating spectrum pellets which I was very happy about. My normal daily feeding per tank consists of:

2 cubes Mysis
2 "cubes" worth of Rod's Food
1 "cube" of Nutramar Ova
1 cube of Spirulina brine
1 cube of bloodworms
1 cube of cyclops
1 cube of Red Plankton

And throughout the day I toss in Spectrum Pellets when I walk past the tank.

Woah, loads of food. How big is the tank and whats in there ?

 

[ca1ore]

I feed a sheet of nori daily and pellets occasionally, otherwise it's all frozen (and a variety of). Many of my fish will not eat pellets, so frozen is required. Don't believe there's any useful generalization between dry or dozen as pertains to released nutrients. Rinsing frozen (with the possible exception of PE mysis) has been determined to be of minimal usefulness.