Rinsing Frozen food under tap water?

LifeOfAquatics

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Is rinsing frozen food under hot tap water safe? I want to do this using a net to get the food to thaw and clean faster, plus it would get the fish used to the net. Is this method safe though? I plan on feeding mysis as of now and may move on to other stuff. Will the frozen food like absorb the tap water and then will my fish take in the tap water? Please and thank you in advance.
 

Jekyl

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Is rinsing frozen food under hot tap water safe? I want to do this using a net to get the food to thaw and clean faster, plus it would get the fish used to the net. Is this method safe though? I plan on feeding mysis as of now and may move on to other stuff. Will the frozen food like absorb the tap water and then will my fish take in the tap water? Please and thank you in advance.
No. Just thaw it in a small glass of tank water.
 

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I bought these glass viles off Amazon, put whatever frozen food into them, cap it off and run it under warm water until thawed. Also mix in any other foods like reef roids, AB+, etc to let it soak.
 
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LifeOfAquatics

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I bought these glass viles off Amazon, put whatever frozen food into them, cap it off and run it under warm water until thawed. Also mix in any other foods like reef roids, AB+, etc to let it soak.
ooo ill check those out they look interesting! but for my original question, is it safe or should I do something different?
 

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what are the parameters of your tap water? I’d assume most city water would be fine.
 

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It only takes a couple minutes to thaw a frozen food cube. Use a small cup of tank water, drop in the cube and in 5 or 10 mins you are ready to go. Pour it into the tank or net no problems..
 

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I thaw them in 7tds ro water in a yoghurt jar. After it’s thawed about 2 minutes later I pour that through a drain screen. Then rinse it quickly with ro water and feed.

these are the type of screen I use, about 3 bucks in the plumbing aisle at every big box store.
2188C834-F140-4E7B-B22B-A914950ACBC2.jpeg
 

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I thaw them in 7tds ro water in a yoghurt jar. After it’s thawed about 2 minutes later I pour that through a drain screen. Then rinse it quickly with ro water and feed.

these are the type of screen I use, about 3 bucks in the plumbing aisle at every big box store.
2188C834-F140-4E7B-B22B-A914950ACBC2.jpeg
Doing it this way made a measurable impact on phosphates. However, once a week I would thaw a whole cube, packing juice and all in tank water and feed that. I have nothing to support this claim but I felt like it provided some nourishment for the filter feeders in the tank as well.
 

zalick

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Most of the juice it is packed in is full of nitrates and phosphates. By rinsing I can feed more often. So long as I feed my corals something

Randy has addressed this many times. Here is one of his posts explaining the relatively negligible amount in the liquid v. The food itself.

I don't agree. I think folks have been misled by a "simple test" (see below).

Rinsing has a possible downside, IMO, which is to potentially rinse away potassium (from the inside of cells broken open by freezing) that folks may later need to dose because they threw it away.



Rinsing Foods and the Effect on Phosphate
Now that we have some information on the phosphate in foods, we can critically examine the concern that many aquarists have about foods, and specifically their rinsing of frozen foods before use. A typical test you see is someone taking a cube of fish food, thawing it, and putting it into a half cup of water. They then test that water for phosphate and find it “off the charts”. Let’s assume that means 1 ppm phosphate, which would give a very dark blue color in many phosphate tests. Bear in mind this is a thought problem, not an actual measured value, but it is typical of what people think the answer is.

Is that a lot of phosphate? Well, there are two ways to think of the answer.

The first way is as a portion of the total phosphate in that food. A half cup of water at 1 ppm (1 mg/L) phosphate contains a total of 0.12 mg of phosphate. A cube of Formula 2 contains about 11.2 mg of phosphate. So the hypothetical rinsing step has removed about 1 percent of the phosphate in that food. Not really worthwhile, in my opinion, but that decision is one every aquarist can make for themselves.

The second way to look at this rinsing is with respect to how much it reduces the boost to the aquarium phosphate concentration. Using the same calculation as above of 0.12 mg of phosphate, and adding that to 100 gallons total water volume, we find that phosphate that was rinsed away would have boosted the “in tank” phosphate concentration by 0.12 mg/379 L = 0.0003 ppm. That amount washed away does not seem significant with respect to the “in tank” target level of about 50-100 times that level (say, 0.015 to 0.03 ppm), nor does it seem significant relative to the total amount of phosphate actually added each day in foods (which is perhaps 50-1000 times as much, based on input rates from Table 4. Again, the conclusion I make is that rinsing is not really worthwhile, in my opinion.
 
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LifeOfAquatics

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Randy has addressed this many times. Here is one of his posts explaining the relatively negligible amount in the liquid v. The food itself.
so i dont have to rinse out then? I am using regular frozen mysis, not PE mysis if that helps. rinsing it out is fine every once in a while, but every time I feed just gets annoying for me If you know what i mean. its just one extra thing for me to do.
 
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LifeOfAquatics

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Appreciate you posting that. Changes some things in my tank for sure
so i dont have to rinse out then? I am using regular frozen mysis, not PE mysis if that helps. rinsing it out is fine every once in a while, but every time I feed just gets annoying for me If you know what i mean. its just one extra thing for me to do.
 

zalick

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so i dont have to rinse out then? I am using regular frozen mysis, not PE mysis if that helps. rinsing it out is fine every once in a while, but every time I feed just gets annoying for me If you know what i mean. its just one extra thing for me to do.
Correct. It adds a negligible amount of nutrients.
 

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I thaw them in 7tds ro water in a yoghurt jar. After it’s thawed about 2 minutes later I pour that through a drain screen. Then rinse it quickly with ro water and feed.

these are the type of screen I use, about 3 bucks in the plumbing aisle at every big box store.
2188C834-F140-4E7B-B22B-A914950ACBC2.jpeg

To use RO water for rinsing is maybe the worst type of rising. RO water is near zero in ions and will suck out both nutrients and other possible important compounds from the food.

Most of the juice it is packed in is full of nitrates and phosphates. By rinsing I can feed more often. So long as I feed my corals something
I´m in line with Randy here - I never rinse my frozen food - never have done it. I only feed with frozen food.

Sincerely Lasse
 

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