Feeding Mysis

saintperez

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You guys might this to be a funny question. I read something to the effect that you shouldn't dump the left over water from thawed mysis shrimp because it might raise your phosphates. Any truth to that? And if so not sure how you would feed the corals if it didn't have some of that water. I use a syring with some clear tubing and a long clear rod to pull it in then have control for feeding my corals as I push out. SO thaw water good or bad?
 
Feed it all. That's a myth about it raising phosphates. HERE's a nice article from Dr. Randy Holmes Farley that explains the myth.
 
I heard this about brine shrimp as they're harvested from waters with high levels of phosphate. So their body contains higher than normal phosphate levels.
I don't know how true that is though.
 
It is certainly fine to dump the water, and many do, but as shown in the link above, the water itself is not going to cause a phosphate problem, even if you test it and detect a lot of phosphate in it, because after dilution into the entire aquarium, it just is not that much in the scheme of the whole aquarium phosphate cycle. :)

Here's the relevant section from it:

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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If you are to rinse a good practice would be to use RO as the rinse and a mesh screen coffee filter serves as a good strainer. Perhaps overkill but still a good practice
 
Wow and that never crossed my mind I use ro water to soak my fish food in.. I use a turkey baster then dip the cup into the tank and rinse it out dumping the little I couldn't suck up with baster into my tank. I use brine, mysis, salmon, squid, clam, and muscles in my dyi fish food I have never had a spike from phosphates but that's just my tank
 
I feed a variety of Hikari frozen foods directly into tank with the use of tongs, usually in front of a powerhead to rapidly distribute throughout the tank. Before my Tangs got to smart I'd sometimes drop them (frozen cubes) onto the top of PH to have them shotgun blast food into tank. Rapid dispersion into tank will allow some to be eaten by the LPS and Paly's. Have done this for well over 20 years with no issues.

Cheers, Todd
 
I also just run it thru RO water after thawing in a fine mesh net. I read that somewhere too and that's why I always put it thru RO.....not sure now if I really need to do that.
 
It's not really the defrosted water I'm so concerned about but the extra shrimp particles that none of the fish will eat anyway. That's why I rinse, at least 3 or 4 times, and pour out a lot of the extra gunk that comes with each cube. I only like to feed whole pieces of mysis. I've seen my fish stare at the smaller bits and pieces of mysis and they completely bypass them in favor of the whole meaty pieces. All that extra stuff just ends up rotting and deteriorating somewhere.
 
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Haven't washed in 14 years dump it all in.

If you have a skimmer u should have 0 to worry about like Randy Mentioned food is wayy less volume than probably 001% of tanks total water volume no way it will effect anything the small bits get taken up by just about anything living including your live sand bed.
 
I guess I am the odd ball out I put my frozen in a cup add some tank water to it then just dump it in.

I don't think that makes you odd at all. It's perfectly fine to do it that way. It's really just a matter of preference. I have to dissolve mine in a cup of tank water and then target feed with the power heads off. That's because I have a nano tank. If I KNEW that my fish would be fed fine, I would dump it too. It's not going to matter HOW you feed as long as A) you're not feeding too much and B) you're not wasting food into the filter/intake.

As for rinsing frozen food? Heck no. :wink: Too much work for me. Besides, if you have leftover particles, it leaves the rest for any filter feeders, copepods, amphipods, etc.

Randy, thanks for the GREAT information.
 
This is what i got from the frozen brine (OC)...dangerous for nano tanks? well my phosphate levels dropped seriously when i rinsed the frozen cubes then spot feed the fish. Also changed the feeding schedule from twice a day to every other day.

IMG-20140726-WA0003.jpg
IMG-20140726-WA0001.jpg


Have not tested the mysis though...
 
We had 1500 pounds of premium mysis delivered this week at LRS Foods. Just so you know we DO rinse it as the last step before blending it into Reef, Fish and Herbivore Frenzy blends!

8111C0BC-2A3E-4E1D-8CEA-BF0AB9E9B763_zpsegplyhom.jpg
 
This is what i got from the frozen brine (OC)...dangerous for nano tanks? well my phosphate levels dropped seriously when i rinsed the frozen cubes then spot feed the fish. Also changed the feeding schedule from twice a day to every other day.

IMG-20140726-WA0003.jpg IMG-20140726-WA0001.jpg

Have not tested the mysis though...

That's the exact sort of test I was suggesting was misleading. I would suggest that feeding 1/4 as often is likely to be why you noticed a drop in phosphate. :)
 

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