frozen vs dry pellet food

[reeferious]

have always fed frozen food but am considering adding pellet food to my feeding schedule. just wondering how this affects water quality, fish health, waste buildup?

[Trigger Man]

Frozen tends to affect the water quality a lot more then good quality pellet foods. If you are feeding a couple of different types it will allow ones fishes health to flurish.
If your fish are not used to eating pellets it may take a few weeks for them to get used to the idea, you may have to feed half frozen half pellets to begin with.

[reeferious]

thanks i always thought it was the other way around since i was basing on the logic that any frozen feed(mysis, bloodworm, cyclopleze etc) not eaten by fish would be cleaned up by tank scavengers. i will start trying some dry pellet food now.

[Trigger Man]

The pellets not eaten by the fish will also be eaten by scavengers, if you overfeed anything (including pellets) a bunch it will have ill effects on ones tank.

[untamed]

I feed both. Pellets for lunch...Frozen for dinner...Nori both times.

[fishytime]

My feeding regiment is made up almost entirely of a mix of different frozen foods enriched with selcon(if it isnt already). I use dry foods only as a "convenience" food if I am hurried to get the tank fed. All dry foods claim to not contain phosphates(but do) and some actually contain copper sulfate(NLS). Just my opinion but I personally dont want to feed my fish a crap load of chemicals and wheat proteins. During the summer I was super busy with work and fed the tank dry foods for three weeks or so. I spent the next few weeks battling diatoms and red slime algae. That was enough for me to hide the dry foods in the back room so I wasnt tempted by convenience and since Ive stopped with the dry foods the pesky algae has gone.

[o.c.d.]

Fishytime is right I found out the hard way I have a auto feeder that dumps sinking pellets. Soon after setting up I lost a 6 year old maze brain. Took me forever to figure out that the sinking pellets were landing on the brain. And that the food contained copper. "Read the ingredients" Not every LFS will remember that you have a reef tank when you buy a fish that was raised on pellets.

[my2rotties]

What is the reason for copper being in pellets?

[o.c.d.]

For fish to not get sick. Just like how we can treat them for some disease with a copper treatment. If you make them ingest it , it will be less likely for them to get sick. That is what I was told. I'm sure many people with reefs use it and have unexplained coral death or can't keep certain coral, this may be a contributing factor after all any reefer will tell you copper and coral don't mix well.

[Snaz]

I think the more you can mix up any feeding regime the better. Like us our tanks need lots of variety.

For frozen food I rinse first in a net, this removes LOTS of the goop that the frozen food is packed in and just leaves the meat. Often I will soak the food in vita-chem for a few minutes for that extra goodness.

[my2rotties]

I would think that if you keep medicating that disease would build a tolerance to the meds much like humans. I will be avoiding foods with copper since I don't think it is a great idea to treat for disease unless they actually have it. Would copper not build up in the fish's system to toxic levels over time? I would hope if I have a healthy system and healthy fish, I would not need to medicate or give food that has any sort of meds in it.

Am I mistaken in thinking this?

For fish to not get sick. Just like how we can treat them for some disease with a copper treatment. If you make them ingest it , it will be less likely for them to get sick. That is what I was told. I'm sure many people with reefs use it and have unexplained coral death or can't keep certain coral, this may be a contributing factor after all any reefer will tell you copper and coral don't mix well.

[o.c.d.]

I think that applies more to antibiodics. Like eruthrimiasin (spelling??)use for killing cyno eventually it won't work if used over and over. From what I just read it is another mineral taken up buy the fish from natural seawater which dose contain small amounts of copper. Copper kills the skin and gill parasites. I can only guess why having copper in a fish would be beneficial. Maybe the fish with high levels of copper are not so tasty to a skin or gill parasite?? Interesting though I would be interested to find the real answer.I might just email the food company. Spectum??? anyone I threw mine out everyone seems to carry it.