To the original poster (and others) thank you for using LRS Foods! We hope your fish and aquarium inhabitants have been enjoying the Reef Frenzy® Nano blend. Like many mentioned the food is very thin and easy to simply slice up like a tic-tac-toe pattern into any size cubes you desire. It is also very easy to keep frozen until feeding time and simply snap off a piece. Some breeders even use a cheese grater if they need to grind it up for smaller sized fish or juvenile clownfish.
Just a couple of things I wanted to mention about food handling. We supply food for some of the most expensive aquarium fish in the hobby, both in private and public aquariums. Therefore we always strive to recommend the best practices for preparation and storage. Over the last 8 years we have seen nearly every food prep and feeding method you can imagine. With respect to our foods please take note of the following suggestions:
1. Only store as much thawed food as you can feed in the fridge in 24 hours. Upon thawing fatty acids start degrading at an increasingly fast rate day by day. As someone mention after 3-4 days the food has taken a turn and by days 6-7 it is likely spoiled (and will smell like it). Public aquariums and aquaculture facilities have elaborate food prep areas which are used on a daily basis verses preparing food for a week at a time.
2. It is never advisable to thaw LRS foods back into a liquid or "mushy" state so they can be added to cube trays or mixed with other foods. When any "meaty" food is re-frozen slowly in a residential freezer ice crystals form and there is a "shearing" effect. This breaks down the food at the cellular level further degrading the food. Please bear in mind we already have thawed and rinsed the PE Mysis one time before adding it to our blend, so if you thaw/freeze again it is subjecting the delicate shrimp to even more ice crystals. There are articles which explain that the nutritional content of the food is further diminished when food is subjected to repeated thaw/freeze events. This is why it is equally important to make sure that when you transport frozen fish food home from the LFS you should make an effort to bring a cooler and ice packs so the food doesn't thaw on the way home.
These two points may not seem like a big deal, and I am sure many folks may disagree there is any risk. However as a manufacturer with stringent quality control we always want to recommend the best possible way to care for and prepare our products. It makes sense that if you are spending hard earned money on a premium, ultra-fresh aquarium food you would want to keep it in the bast condition possible until feeding time. I wasn't trying to be critical of anyone posting, just wanted to share some information incase a new hobbyist stumbled on thread and did not know about our recommendations for food handling.
Thanks as always for the support from the awesome R2R community.
