kien's 150g Room Divider Mixed Reef & Stuff

lastlight · #1 10-10-2010, 07:22 AM

I was under the impression these frozen foods (mysis/brine etc) were sorta like filler and not a complete diet for the fish? I currently do feed both but have been thinking of the pellets as my primary. My fish do consume all of them though...

fishytime · #2 10-10-2010, 07:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lastlight

I was under the impression these frozen foods (mysis/brine etc) were sorta like filler and not a complete diet for the fish? I currently do feed both but have been thinking of the pellets as my primary. My fish do consume all of them though...

maybe I should clarify

.....I feed a "special" blend of food which I dont rinse, because it has garlic and selcone added to it.....I feed a brine/mysis shrimp combo which I strain and then soak in selcon.....and I also feed the "ocean plankton" (which the shop carries

), that I strain(no vitamins added as this is as close to a natural diet as most fish will get)

....

Lance · #3 10-10-2010, 04:43 PM

Thanks for the info Kien. That was a substantial amount of effort! Makes me re-think using flake foods.

lobsterboy · #4 10-11-2010, 06:06 AM

wow thats some sick info there Kien, impressive.

ya didnt happen to test New Life Spectrum.... ?

kien · #5 10-12-2010, 04:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lobsterboy

wow thats some sick info there Kien, impressive.

ya didnt happen to test New Life Spectrum.... ?

No, sorry

Okay, so to finish up these tests I tested PE Mysis rinsed, New Salt Water (Instant Ocean), and my homemade fish mush prior to adding additives such as garlic and vitamins. I updated the original post with these results, but here they are.

- Rinsed PE Mysis - >2.5 !!
- New Salt Water (Instant Ocean) - 0.0
- My Homemade Fish mush (before additives added) - 0.33

Now, the first thing that jumped out at me was the PE Mysis! Yikes! One thing that was different was that I left the PE Mysis out over night so it had a long time to leech out. Also, PE Mysis is made up of a heck of a lot of water, so there must be a lot of phosphate bound up in its body. I was quite surprised to see how little phosphate was in the superstore mixed seafood which I use for my homemade blended fish mush. This leads me to conclude that there must be a lot of phosphates in the additives, either the garlic extract or selcon or both!

lastlight · #6 10-12-2010, 05:06 AM

Damn 2.5. I may as well just dose P04 directly into the damn tank.

So if it gets entirely eaten and pooped out...is the P04 still P04? There's no magic anywhere in it's journey I'm guessing.

kien · #7 10-12-2010, 05:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lastlight

Damn 2.5. I may as well just dose P04 directly into the damn tank.

So if it gets entirely eaten and pooped out...is the P04 still P04? There's no magic anywhere in it's journey I'm guessing.

Actually, phosphorus is an essential element to organisms. We need it, fish need it, but the problem is most prepared foods contain more phosphorus than is needed. What that means in the end, I don't know. I'm not a biologist

kien · #8 10-10-2010, 07:37 AM

You reminded me if one surprising result. When I tested my tap water for phosphates it came up zero!! Everyone is always freaked out about the phosphate content of tap water.. Why? I know that there is a lot of other junk in our tap water, hence my TDS reading of 214 but apparently phosphate is not among them. And yes I do realize that not all tap water is created equal.

Also, I am not surprised but I am disappointed that my nori had quite a bit of phosphate. Mainly because nori tends to not get consumed right away so there is plenty of time for it to leech it's phosphates unlike the other foods that typically get eaten immediately.

fishytime · #9 10-10-2010, 07:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kien

You reminded me if one surprising result. When I tested my tap water for phosphates it came up zero!! Everyone is always freaked out about the phosphate content of tap water.. Why? I know that there is a lot of other junk in our tap water, hence my TDS reading of 214 but apparently phosphate is not among them. And yes I do realize that not all tap water is created equal.

Also, I am not surprised but I am disappointed that my nori had quite a bit of phosphate. Mainly because nori tends to not get consumed right away so there is plenty of time for it to leech it's phosphates unlike the other foods that typically get eaten immediately.

not much phosphate in our taps.....but test the water below the outflow of the treatment facilities on the Bow......its what makes the Bow the blue ribbon fishery that it is......phosphate grows weeds.....which grows bugs.....which grows trout

Delphinus · #10 10-10-2010, 07:55 AM

This is my understanding. Might be a bit oversimplified but as far as I know it's more or less correct still:

There is phosphates in everything, it's not going to be possible to get away from phosphates. It is like other things however, including NO3, in that there is some uptake by organisms so there will be some minor fluctuations in the levels from one day to the next however it is usually a given that we tend to input more than a tank is able to uptake and thus there is a residual value which usually creeps up in the absence of a PO4 reduction mechanism (eg. algae, refugium, ULNS, GFO, kalk, etc.) Some phosphate is necessary for growth, although too high a value inhibits calcification and thus inhibits coral growth or encourages tissue recession.

Anyhow that said, phosphate is not just phosphate, there is inorganic phosphate and organic phosphate. Of interest to us is organic phosphate, but you can only test for inorganic phosphate. Generally speaking we assume that the level of organic phosphate is around the same as inorganic phosphate, but that may not always be the case.

I remember reading that if you boil a water sample for some period of time and then test for phosphate, you will get a different value for before and after, because the organic phosphate denatures into inorganic during boiling.

Having said that however, that may not be the explanation for the tapwater producing a zero value. Drinking water standards dictate acceptable levels for many different parameters and AFAIK, nitrates and phosphates are to be zero (or very close to zero), and municipalities are thus mandated to provide water as such. I remember there was a big thing in the news about some small town had to provide bottled water because the tapwater had a detectable level of nitrate.

I could be wrong but that's what I always thought anyhow.