phosphates/frozen food

[beerking]

I've been trying to get a hold on my phosphates. I have a red slime problem and I also have to clean my glass (brown) everyday. My sps grows like crazy, but I have very little coraline (on the glass, my rockwork is covered) My nitrates are almost undetectable, but I have no way of accurately measuring phosphates. I now use two phosban reactors and have a fuge stuffed with chaeto. I have to prune my chaeto biweekly or it grows out of control.

Now the only thing I can figure was that I had only been feeding flake and lot of it. I recently started to feed more meat and less flake. I rinse it in RODI water, but my question is, how long can you keep rinsed frozen food? Can I use it the next day if stored in the fridge? Is rinsed frozen food better than flake (formula two)?

Sorry for the ranting, any help would be appreciated....

[HighlandReefer]

How high were phosphate levels and for how long?

[beerking]

Originally posted by HighlandReefer
How high were phosphate levels and for how long?

Not really sure. Other than a hanna meter ($200+) I don't know of any reliable way of measuring phophates. I always judged it by algae, colors, and glass scraping.

[HighlandReefer]

The possiblility exists that if your phosphates were high at one time, your live rock and coral sand bed absorbed phosphates and now it is slowly leaching back into your water system. If that is the case, it may take some time before it all leaches out. It sounds like with what you have going, it will eventually leach out and the problems will go away. I assume that with like a Salifert phosphate kit, you are at least getting 0 readings?

[Billybeau1]

What kind of media are you using in your phos reactors ?

I find Saliferts phosphate kit reasonably reliable for detecting PO₄ levels around .03 ppm which should be good enough for our purposes.

Flake food contains a lot of phosphate. I would cut back on that and try to use rinsed frozen more.

[beerking]

Originally posted by Billybeau1
What kind of media are you using in your phos reactors ?

I find Saliferts phosphate kit reasonably reliable for detecting PO₄ levels around .03 ppm which should be good enough for our purposes.

Flake food contains a lot of phosphate. I would cut back on that and try to use rinsed frozen more.

I've been using PURA phoslock. But still have the question, can you store rinsed, thawed, frozen food in the fridge for a day or two? Or does it rot a little and cause more phosphates?

[tegee]

Originally posted by Billybeau1
What kind of media are you using in your phos reactors ?

I find Saliferts phosphate kit reasonably reliable for detecting PO₄ levels around .03 ppm which should be good enough for our purposes.

Flake food contains a lot of phosphate. I would cut back on that and try to use rinsed frozen more.

I eliminated using flake food after a major outbreak of nuisance algae and minor tank crash. Almost drove me out of the hobby two years ago. I use frozen food almost exclusively and seem to eliminate the algae problem. I rinse the frozen each day I use it and do not let it sit overnight, etc.

[tmz]

I thaw and rinse the frozen food in chlorinated tap water to control any residual bacteria. A study published in CORAL magazine a couple of years ago showed vibrio bacteria which can be harmful to fish present in almost all frozen foods even when they had not thawed. The recommended procedure was to rinse with tap water. After thawing I pour the slurry through a brine shrimp net,dump thenet contents into a container and add a little ro water. I then feed with a turkey baster. I keep it in the rerigerator and feed 2x per day. Each batch last for 3 feedings, so yes I keep it overnight.

i also feed a small amount of spirulina flake and Prime Reef flake for additional nutrition and variety.

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

All foods contain substantial phosphate, but unless they have added phosphate (like some fresh, canned and frozen seafoods for people do), I am not certain that any particular type of food has more phosphate relative to other nutrients like protein than do other types. one thing that adds a ton of phosphate is anything that has bones in it, including whole fish.

Ron Shimek analyzes some foods here;

http://web.archive.org/web/200107200...data/foods.asp

I've never calculated this before, but if you look at the phosphorus to protein ratio, you get:


Formula Two...........................176
Formula One.............................69
Frozen Brine Shrimp................232
Frozen Plankton/Krill...............182
Golden Pearls..........................273
Lancefish.................................244
Nori..........................................221
Plankton Gold Flakes...............169
Prime Reef.................................69
Saltwater Staple......................500
Silversides...............................952
Tahitian Blend..........................318

[tmz]

Nice information Randy. Thanks. Looks like the small amounts of Prime Reef I use are a good thing.

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Thanks.

Yes, it does look that way.

[BigJay]

Thanks for the chart Randy. Now I don't feel so bad about using Formula 1.

I wonder how bad some of the reef nutrition refrigerated food products like arcti-pods are for phosphates?

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I've not seen any other similar data for aquarium foods.

[mikegerard]

I was able to see the file at this link...
http://web.archive.org/web/200107200...data/foods.asp

There is a ton of information here on different foods...much more than just phosphate info.

I made a pdf of it. I can send it to you if you send me a pm with your email. It looks like the file is just a little too big to attach in this post.

Mike

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Yes, that is the article that I linked above that I got the data from. But what I meant is that there is no similar data on other foods in it or other articles.

[BigJay]

Originally posted by Randy Holmes-Farley
All foods contain substantial phosphate, but unless they have added phosphate (like some fresh, canned and frozen seafoods for people do), I am not certain that any particular type of food has more phosphate relative to other nutrients like protein than do other types. one thing that adds a ton of phosphate is anything that has bones in it, including whole fish.

So most seafood meant for human consumption has added phosphates? How can you tell if it does or doesn't?

I'll feed a treat once per week of chopped seafood (squid, octopus, fish, and clam) mixed with spirulina powder and nori all blended together. The fish love it.

What do you usually feed your tank Randy?

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I do not know if most do, but many do. it is not really possible to tell about fresh seafood, but canned and frozen seafood often lists it as an ingredient.

I feed a varying diet of nori, clams, shrimp, silversides, frozen hobby fish food and flake food.

[tmz]

I feed about the same mix plus bloodworms,cyclopeeze and some spirulina flake. Is there something about clams I should think about?

[fred fishstone]

Based on the chart in this thread, I recently picked up some frozen Formula One. I thaw it in a small glass of tank water, then break it up into small chunks and dump it in the tank. The fish all respond well, but the skimmer goes crazy for hours -- overflowing profusely unless I crank it way down.

Any idea what causes this?

[bertoni]

I haven't had that issue with the Formula One, but I've been feeding my own food for a while. What brand of skimmer is this?

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I use the frozen Formula 1 and have not noticed a skimmer increase, but it sounds like the effect you get from certain organics in the foods that can act as surfactants.

[fred fishstone]

Originally posted by bertoni
I haven't had that issue with the Formula One, but I've been feeding my own food for a while. What brand of skimmer is this?

It's an older Euro-Reef with mesh-mod and a gate valve. It's pretty finicky, but when feeding this Formula One, I have to open the gate valve more than two full turns.

I guess I was concerned that there might be something potentially harmful in the food.

[cham]

The formula 1 looks pretty good.

I have Ignitus anthias that are very active fish and need to be fattened up. I wanted something that I can feed them in between my nightly mysis meals one to two times per day and since I cannot be home it looks like I have to look at pellet foods on some type of auto feeder.

If I'm reading it right, Randy's info posted above is for frozen foods. Is there a P04 analysis on pellet foods out there? I'd like to find something low in P04 and high in fat and protein to feed.

Thanks

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

The link above covers a variety of different types of foods. Aside from the article linked, I've not see any food analysis that allows comparisons.

[fred fishstone]

I haven't been rinsing the Formula One, as I have with Mysis and such. Based on that article, I wouldn't have thought it to be necessary. What do you think?