Do you really need to thaw frozen food?

[pjlovesbaskets]

Okay, I know it is best to thaw frozen food in warm water and strain it. However, my question is why? I am going on vacation and will be having someone watching my tanks. I would hate for her to dump the tap water into my tank without thinking. My water is awful. I was just curious how bad it would be to drop in the frozen food and let it thaw naturally while I am gone. It would be one cube in a 125g tank twice a day. I feed shrimp brine, mysis, and formula 1 and 2. Alternating between the foods on a rotation.

 

[jacrmill]

just get a cup of tank water and dissolve the frozen food in that. Then just dump the entire cup of water with the dissolved food in the tank. should be easy enough to explain to someone who doesnt know much about saltwater tanks. You just wont be rinsing your food, but itll be fine.

 

[pjlovesbaskets]

Good suggestion. I appreciate it and that is probably what I will do but...just curious...why couldn't you just drop it in? Why is it bad? Same water going in... just skipping a step.

 

[jacrmill]

only reason i dont do that is because it all goes in as 1 big chunk. just seems like if you dethaw it in water first it floats everywhere so everybody gets some food and nobody gets in a fight.

 

[markeo99]

I do sometimes my percs knaw chunks off they love it one garbs the chunk and the rest chase him around catching the pieces

 

[sbaumann14]

we usually throw 2 cubes into the the tank right from the freezer and the fish love it!! it gets sucked over to the korila 3 and POOF!! mysis shrimp everywhere!!!

 

[pjlovesbaskets]

That is what I was thinking. One time brine shrimp slipped from my hand and in seconds it was falling apart. I witnessed what you said when the piece floated to the flow of the power jets. I was just wondering if this had some bad effect on the tank somehow.

 

[viper_930]

You should thaw out and rinse frozen foods. Otherwise you'll be adding a lot of phosphates to your tank. I rinse everything with the exception of gelled foods.
Thaw out a cube of mysids in a cup of water and test the water for phosphates. It'll be off the charts.

 

[pjlovesbaskets]

What do Phosphates do to a tank?

 

[fatcat]

Algae..