This is a recent discussion but yes, dry-weight food is NOT equivalent, the best way to measure this is to figure that the frozen food is 85% water, so 3g frozen x 15% = 0.45g "dehydrated", call it 1/2 gram, and that is the cube-equivalent dry food.
This is a recent discussion but yes, dry-weight food is NOT equivalent, the best way to measure this is to figure that the frozen food is 85% water, so 3g frozen x 15% = 0.45g "dehydrated", call it 1/2 gram, and that is the cube-equivalent dry food.
But since pellets are dry and compressed, they tend to get eaten whole before they disperse, and thus they can have less impact on the water.
That makes no sense if we are talking about long-term (weekly) average, which is all that really matters. Everything has to be broken down anyways to N and P for the algae to grow, whether that is done by a fish in the form of expelled waste from the previous time he ate or from the food that is currently added to the system and not immediately eaten this makes no difference. This is why I don't test my water right before I feed and then 20 minutes after - because it is the average which matters, and as long as food inserted = waste produced = algae growth is balanced, then that's all that matters.
The fact of the matter in discussion here is that you must reduce all matter to the dry form to equalize amounts. Beyond that, composition of the now dry amount will have varying impacts on the water column.
SM - you could dry out one of your cubes, then weigh it. Then at least we would know.
I am not sure if this is right but I always assumed that 2-3 frozen cubes would be about SM one cube if the water was removed. Since I have gone LED's with Red and Blue I dont even worry about what I feed. I feed until the fish dont seem to want anymore. I have been doing this for MONTHS!!!! Some weeks the screen looks like mop other times its only an inch thick. I just dont worry about it any more since I am on the BLUE's LOL.
150G. Reef/Mix
125G. 3 Regular Oscars/1 Jack Dempsey
75G. 20+ Africans
40G. Fish/Reef. Algae Scrubbers on ALL my SW
10G. SW Fish/Reef.
10G. SW Hospital/new fish quarantine/pod breeder tank
6 stage RO/DI system 200 GPD.
It seems to me that the important part of the equation is protein. If the food you are feeding has %50 protein and you feed 1 gram then you have fed 0.5 gram of protein. This should be taken into consideration for your calculations instead of physical measurements. There are too many variables for physical measurement, but protein is a consistent measurement across frozen and dry foods.
Due to the variance in uptake, growth rate and affinity for N & P evident with different strains of algae that reside on the screens (ie you can't control what algae your gonna get), I think being this accurate may be a waste of time. For what it's worth I'm pretty certain that the 1cm x 1cm x 1 cm cube is closer to the mark. So the L2, L3 and L4 don't need a name change.
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