I was always told to place frozen cubes in a cup of fresh ro or destilled water for a few minutes, pour out as much of the water without spilling the food and then feed. The reason being that your getting rid of all the extra junk that came with the frozen food. Is this correct? Does anyone else do this?
I think that is recommended for things like Brine Shrimp and PE mysis, if you want to cut down on the gunk. But for prepared foods like LRS Reef Frenzy, etc, no - you don't want to rinse anything away. The thought process was mainly to reduce the phosphate input to the tank. But the problem with that logic is that all food (life) has phosphate inside the cellular structure. So rinsing does not fully eliminate it. I use a DIY food that has a lot of additives, so rinsing would only wash those ($) down the drain
I used to do this but do not do this after reading an article by Randy Holmes-Farley http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2012/3/chemistry that suggested the reduction in impurities was so trivial it wasn't worth the bother, what i have noticed is that since i have stopped straining i now have a NO3 reading, personally i think this is down to using a high sensitivity test kit as salifert used to indicate 0.02 but the new test kit has given me readings ranging from 4 down to 1
I was talking to a mate today about this and he reminded me that some foods contain a fair amount (relatively) of copper, he cited brine shrimp as an example, personally i don't feed brine but do feed just about everything else in powder, pellet, flake and frozen so i am hoping this approach reduces any exposure i have, i don't know if its a coincidence but he has just set up a triton tank and has had some water tested in a lab in Germany, i am also planning to use this lab to test my water although i have no plans to run triton, i will see what the reading is for copper and other undesirable impurities... i will report back in a few weeks once i have the results back.
