Frozen or thawed

[gwand]

Should frozen brine shrimp, Daphia, etc. be thawed before feeding to our fish? Or should the meal be delivered frozen into the tank?

 

[Essjay]

The first fish I had were goldfish which my sons won at the fair. The largest waited until half a frozen cube had thawed then swallowed the remainder whole. After that I've always thawed frozen food before feeding.

 

[MaloK]

Thawed and rinsed in a strainer.

 

[GaryE]

When you thaw brine shrimp, you realize why it isn't a good frozen option. It vanishes when lightly rinsed - there isn't a lot to it. Bloodworms can be thawed and lightly rinsed.

 

[MaloK]

Brine shrimp are tiny organisms, and their nutritional content is primarily within their bodies. As long as you don't over rinse. it's all good for me...

But immo I never even thought about it to that point. I put a little more that's all, a rinsing goes a long way in preventing nutrient buildup in a tank, when you make extensive uses of frozen food.

 

[Colin_T]

It depends on the fish being fed. If they are tropical fish and swallow the frozen food block/ cube in one bite, it can drop their body temperature a little bit and might cause problems (it doesn't normally but might). If they are coldwater fish in a coldwater tank, and they swallow an entire cube of frozen food it's not normally an issue.

If you have small fish, letting the cube float on the surface can allow the fish to pick at it and pull little bits off to eat. However, if it doesn't all get eaten on the surface, it can sink to the bottom where it might not get eaten and will cause water quality problems. If you know the fish won't eat an entire cube while it's frozen and floating, defrost it first and offer a few bits at a time until everyone in the tank has eaten their fill.

You can use a pr of scissors to cut frozen foods into smaller pieces for smaller fish.