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You Don't Want To Know....

Cdiggy

Cdiggy

You really don't.

So I was doing one of my rare water tests ( my Reef Angel keeps my PH and Temp ) as my water parameters are pretty stable at this point. There is never any detectable amount of nitrates or phosphates in the water however I do take Ca and Alk tests on a somewhat weekly schedule. I do not have a Mg kit yet so I have never tested for that.

So yesterday I decided to test my NO3 and PO4 so I grab a hang on side specimen container (the ones that stores use) to collect water to sample and do my tests... and start to freak out over the results. 10 nitrates and 0.8 phosphates. Which of course leads to research on the net and various products to reduce Po4.. And I sleep on it.

This morning it is the first thing I am thinking about so I do a test of PO4 and grab some water from the tank with my swing arm salinity meter (yeah, I know, how archaic) and test. 0.0 PO4. WTH? So I remember reading that brine shrimp introduces PO4 to the tank and realize that the cup I used to take the test water from the tank is the same one the lil' lady uses to thaw the frozen food stuffs for the fish. This leads me to test everything for PO4 including tap water (You don't want to know) RODI water (0.0) retest of the tank water (0.0) and then I add to the container of tank water a small piece of frozen brine shrimp to that and test the water again. Off the charts. Low range pegged at 1.0 and high range pegged at 5.0. I can't believe how much PO4 is in frozen brine shrimp. I didn't test any other food (Veggie mix, blood worms, or the mix of fresh seafood I make) because I damn near burned up my entire kit testing for a ghost.

The moral of the story? Be methodical about your testing... and rinse your brine shrimp (or any other commercially frozen foods)

BTW the brine shrimp brand is San Fransisco.
 
M

mnat

Officer Emeritus
Staff member
Moderator
Bloodworms are notorious for high phosphates. Rinsing food is always a good idea. Also glad to see you did not rush to correct anything and thought it over.
 
M

mnat

Officer Emeritus
Staff member
Moderator
Put a little bit of tank water in a container, get a little metal mesh bowl (the word is escaping me rit now), let the food thaw and then just take the food right out. You can rinse it a bit more if you are picky, but the water it thawed in holds most of the phosphates. Toss the nasty water out.

For better or worse I don't rinse my rods food because it has a lot of micro particles for corals and what not. They even recommend not to rinse it. If you are doing straight mysis or brine I would rinse.
 
hjp109

hjp109

mnat said:
Put a little bit of tank water in a container, get a little metal mesh bowl (the word is escaping me rit now), let the food thaw and then just take the food right out. You can rinse it a bit more if you are picky, but the water it thawed in holds most of the phosphates. Toss the nasty water out.

For better or worse I don't rinse my rods food because it has a lot of micro particles for corals and what not. They even recommend not to rinse it. If you are doing straight mysis or brine I would rinse.
Click to expand...

Do u mean a metal strainer :)
 
hjp109

hjp109

I guess this means I shouldn't be throwing the water I thawed the frozen food with...back in my tank... GOOD POINT.
 
jose7878

jose7878

After reading this Saturday I ended up buying a brine shrimp net. To clean my food.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
spotter

spotter

Rand Holmes Farley did a whole write up about rinsing food because of adding po4 and no3 to the system. His conclusion was that it really doesn't matter whether you rinse or not. When you think about how many ml's of water is used to thaw the food and then introduced to our systems that in some cases are hundreds of gallons of water, the po4 and no3 would be diluted to a negligible level. I will look for the article and post it here when I find it.
 
Cdiggy

Cdiggy

the amount of po4 added to the tank when feeding is negligible compared to the size of the tank but I just can't bring myself to knowingly add po4 to the tank when I can remove it by rinsing. Plus it has got to add up over time and go somewhere in the tank that you don't want it to go. Whether it gets absorbed into the rock or feeds something you would rather not have in your tank...
 
spotter

spotter

but you realize that you are adding po4 by adding food? All the rinsing in the world wont remove po4 from food.
 
Cdiggy

Cdiggy

spotter said:
but you realize that you are adding po4 by adding food? All the rinsing in the world wont remove po4 from food.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I got that but there is no sense putting water that is saturated with po4 that will do nothing but add po4 in the tank. I can't do anything about the food that has it in it but I can decide to not add water that has it in it. It may not be much but in the end it all adds up. And since it is only a matter of straining out the food with a brine shrimp net the extra work is negligible. By the way that article is a good read :) thanks for posting it.
 
redfishbluefish

redfishbluefish

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Steve, great article. To summarize:

1. The greater majority of phosphate in frozen foods is bound up within the food.

2. Rinsing only washes away approximately 1% of phosphate.

3. The large dilution of tank water makes this "free" phosphate insignificant.

4. See 1 (one), above….the food contains the phosphate (as part of the food.)



So if you want to minimize phosphate within your tank, just stop feeding your fish. Rinsing does virtually nothing to help reduce phosphate.
 
Cdiggy

Cdiggy

redfishbluefish said:
So if you want to minimize phosphate within your tank, just stop feeding
Click to expand...

Unfortunately that is not an option either :) I had bought a fully operational reef tank back in the early '90's that was beautiful and through all fault of my own I had major algae outbreaks. So in order to combat it I did a lot of things and one of them was to stop feeding flake 3x a week. All it did was get my Lemonpeel to change its dietary habits. It was particularly fond of mushroom roots. It would bat its baby blues at me when I was looking and attack when I had my back turned.... True Story!
 
@marko@

@marko@

bloodworms?
do people feed bloodworms to reef animals? id figure that since midge larvae are grown in freshwater that they wouldnt be the best choice for saltwater nutrition.
 
Xavier613

Xavier613

That and the minuscule particles that slip through the net when you rinse are perfect food for SPS corals and other water-column feeders as well. Ive never rinsed frozen food, just because of how much you lose when you do it, rather than just a fish food it serves as a fish and coral food.
 
Xavier613

Xavier613

@marko@ said:
bloodworms?
do people feed bloodworms to reef animals? id figure that since midge larvae are grown in freshwater that they wouldnt be the best choice for saltwater nutrition.
Click to expand...


Only thing i have ever really fed bloodworms to was butterfly fish. the looooove bloodworms
 
@marko@

@marko@

While a lot of phosphorus is in the food, its not bad. Phosphorus is required for life. Atp, dna, cellular membranes, etc. All have mountains of phosphate. And the way animals get that phosphate is through food. So you need organically bound phosphate to be available. But algae can use inorganice phosphates, which is the one in the water. So you have to keep that low. But that's where skimmers and chemical media come into play. They can remove organic phosphate before it is decomposed into inorganic phosphate and CO2
 
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