Thawing frozen foods for rays?

[Cajun]

I just chunk the frozen shrimp in there. It thaws by the time it sinks.

 

[CrAzYNeSs]

I thaw shrimp/prawns in a colander under running cold water. After that I peel them and feed them.

 

[Zoodiver]

Thawing frozen food quickly is very bad for the nutritional value of the food.

Someone needs to dig up the old frozen krill thread and bump it again. There are several posts explaining it.

 

[lunemy]

I thaw shrimp/prawns in a colander under running cold water. After that I peel them and feed them.

Please dont peel them the skin and head is good for the ray

 

[skynoch]

Please dont peel them the skin and head is good for the ray

Would love it if my rays would it eat. They became very good at sucking out the meat and leaving the head and skin in the tank.

 

[Just Toby]

Thawing the food has a good benefit to water quality though, the water that the food contains has a lot of dissolved solids in there, by allowing the food to defrost in the tank you are adding more bio load.

I kept African Cichlids for years and always battled with Nitrate, whenever I spoke to people for advice in places that I respect they always asked if I defrosted first as this was an obvious starting point of waste reduction.

 

[ameehl3]

I thaw the food in the tanks own water such as a shot glass or larger cantainer if you have more food to thaw out. I add it shortly after once it thaws, five or ten minutes or so

 

[T1KARMANN]

Thawing the food has a good benefit to water quality though, the water that the food contains has a lot of dissolved solids in there, by allowing the food to defrost in the tank you are adding more bio load.

I kept African Cichlids for years and always battled with Nitrate, whenever I spoke to people for advice in places that I respect they always asked if I defrosted first as this was an obvious starting point of waste reduction.

if the prawns are fit for human consumption after defrosting then they should be fine

i don't see big clouds of nasty water coming off the prawns when they sink or little bits of prawn particles

i cant see it having any big impact on nitrates as it would mean the prawns need to produce nitrites and ammonia which will then be turned into nitrate

the amount of water in the prawns is small less than a egg cup per feed if our filters cant handle that then we are under filtered

by washing the prawns under the tap you could be covering them in chlorine unless you get a cup full of tank water at every feed

the prawns are washed then peeled then washed again before freezing

 

[Just Toby]

There would be no harm in "covering with chlorine" by running the food under the tap as the chlorine would have to be disolved in to the tank water in concentration to harm the fish...if that is what you were getting at? This is not a problem, trust me.

My thawing was not directly at Prawns but frozen food in general i.e. chunks of bloodworm, the water that the bloodworms are frozen in can have a large organic load / nutrient from the waste of the fozen animal, this is just bio load added to the tank which causes Nitrates....eventually as you rightly pointed out the filters would convert the waste to nitrate but I assumed people would know the basics behind that.

The thawing having a benefit on water quality is a fact that is well known in the hobby and was not just a rambling assumption made by me.

 

[Clearwater guy]

I found that the food puts less debris in the water when it is still frozen as long as I hand feed. I used to thaw everything, but that's when the water content of the meat would make a cloud was I put it in the tank. Once I realized that the rays would pull it out of my hand while still frozen, that's how I started doing it. I think if I were to just throw it in though, it would be an issue. It floats for a good bit until it thaws, and thats when the water quality issue comes up.

The Tilapia I've been getting comes individually bagged. So I just hold the bag with the filet in the water until it is thawed just enough to flex a little bit. Then the knife will cut it right up.

The pregnant female I have right now will eat a lot of it before she even leaves the side of the pond. She hasn't shown any issue at all with the cold of it, so I can't see where there's an issue.

As for the shrimp shells, if you hand feed, and make them pull it out of your hand instead of just releasing it under their disc, they will eat it more quickly because they think that they stole it from you....but even then, they will spit some out. But they still eat some of it.

Don't worry about getting bitten. Remember, they have to grind their food against their plate. Although you can feel their teeth, and it always startles me, it has never felt sharp or painful.

Mike