- Location
- Houston, TX
I've seen this a lot while out and about on my job and I'm tired of seeing it. People are thawing food out in there fridge and letting this food sit around for days or even a week in the fridge. Don't do that ****. It's not good for the nutritional stability of the food and it's basically a Nitrate and Phosphate bomb. I have one client who is, what I call, a psuedo-hobbyist. I don't intend that to come off as rude but these are hobbyists who get in deeper than they should have and are either too busy in their 9-5 job or just not able to go much further in the hobby and have hit a brick wall.
So this client has had me coming out every other week to turn his system around and it has been several months at this point. I've suggessted many things, some being carried through and others not acted upon. This is just how it goes and I tell these type of clients that I will gladly continue taking their money to the bank but that things would progress much faster and better if they listened to me. After a couple months of cleaning and changing things, I happened to ask him his feeding routine and habits. He showed me how many pellets he put into the tank....and I was ******* stunned. Snow globe effect with most food just going down the overflow and into the filtration. That wasn't helpful. Ok, how about how he fed frozen food? He thawed out several varieties of cubes in a cup that stayed in his fridge and fed from it during the course of a week.
NOOOOOOOOOOoooooo dude!
There is just no reason to do this, even if your excuse is laziness. He has two Ecotech MP40s on the tank so I told him, if laziness was the issue, just walk up and stick the frozen cube to the side of one or both of the MP40s and walk away. The cube will thaw and be dispersed by the pump. When you thaw frozen food and just let it sit in a cup in the fridge for days, it breaks down and rots....quickly. With the pellets, I got him one of those floating feeding rings with the magnetic mount from Two Little Fishies. I taught him to feed less pellets and to place that pinch into the floating ring. This way the food doesn't go floating right down the overflow drain.
This has been a month ago and his Nitrates are steadily climbing down. There are no corals in the tank because he had 50 ppm Nitrates. When I was there last week I had them down to 20 ppm and I suspect next visit will have the tank ready to start adding corals. If only I had thought sooner to ask him about his feeding habits, we could have saved some time. I had looked at and advised about everything else but it basically came down to how he was feeding his fish like a god damned Las Vegas buffet exploded in your kitchen.
So today, I was cleaning a different client's system and I hear his wife bitching at him on the phone about how the fish food stunk in the fridge. Before I left, I asked her about it. He was thawing frozen food in a cup in the fridge and used it for up to 3-4 days. That's just rotten water at that point. Now the wife will also be happy because I solved her issue of the stinky fridge.
Don't succumb to this lazy way of feeding. The only viable way to feed food that sits around in your fridge is Reef Nutrition foods. I know there are likely a few other brands that are like this but they are my favorite. Pre-thawed and in a squeeze bottle. If you are using frozen foods, stop thawing them out for days and you might even solve Nitrate and phosphate issues and algae issues thusly.
Or not and keep wondering why your tank is a mess.
So this client has had me coming out every other week to turn his system around and it has been several months at this point. I've suggessted many things, some being carried through and others not acted upon. This is just how it goes and I tell these type of clients that I will gladly continue taking their money to the bank but that things would progress much faster and better if they listened to me. After a couple months of cleaning and changing things, I happened to ask him his feeding routine and habits. He showed me how many pellets he put into the tank....and I was ******* stunned. Snow globe effect with most food just going down the overflow and into the filtration. That wasn't helpful. Ok, how about how he fed frozen food? He thawed out several varieties of cubes in a cup that stayed in his fridge and fed from it during the course of a week.
NOOOOOOOOOOoooooo dude!
There is just no reason to do this, even if your excuse is laziness. He has two Ecotech MP40s on the tank so I told him, if laziness was the issue, just walk up and stick the frozen cube to the side of one or both of the MP40s and walk away. The cube will thaw and be dispersed by the pump. When you thaw frozen food and just let it sit in a cup in the fridge for days, it breaks down and rots....quickly. With the pellets, I got him one of those floating feeding rings with the magnetic mount from Two Little Fishies. I taught him to feed less pellets and to place that pinch into the floating ring. This way the food doesn't go floating right down the overflow drain.
This has been a month ago and his Nitrates are steadily climbing down. There are no corals in the tank because he had 50 ppm Nitrates. When I was there last week I had them down to 20 ppm and I suspect next visit will have the tank ready to start adding corals. If only I had thought sooner to ask him about his feeding habits, we could have saved some time. I had looked at and advised about everything else but it basically came down to how he was feeding his fish like a god damned Las Vegas buffet exploded in your kitchen.
So today, I was cleaning a different client's system and I hear his wife bitching at him on the phone about how the fish food stunk in the fridge. Before I left, I asked her about it. He was thawing frozen food in a cup in the fridge and used it for up to 3-4 days. That's just rotten water at that point. Now the wife will also be happy because I solved her issue of the stinky fridge.
Don't succumb to this lazy way of feeding. The only viable way to feed food that sits around in your fridge is Reef Nutrition foods. I know there are likely a few other brands that are like this but they are my favorite. Pre-thawed and in a squeeze bottle. If you are using frozen foods, stop thawing them out for days and you might even solve Nitrate and phosphate issues and algae issues thusly.
Or not and keep wondering why your tank is a mess.