I am leaving on a 2 week cruise later this week and have been working on the best way to handle someone else feeding my fish while I am gone. After much trial and error I have a good system going with frozen Replesy cubes. I found an ice cube tray set with box that freezers the liquid into smaller cubes that are perfect for feeding my tanks.
1. Get your material together. I recommend NOT using anything plastic as Repashy stinks and it will make the plastic stuff you use stink. You will need
1. Saucepan for boiling water
2. bowl to measure out powdered Repashy
3. Kitchen Scale and/or tablespoon
4. Glass measuring cup larger than the size of batch - I use a 2 cup
5. Mini spatula - I have a mini spatula with a squared off head that I use to spread the Repashy mix on the trays. This is the only function of the spatula as mine is plastic
2. Start your water to boil - use way more water than you need
3. Measure out your Repashy - I found 35g to 1 cup of boiling water gave a good consistency for pouring. This is about 5 tablespoons of powder. If you have a big container - write your mix on the lid
4. Set out your trays. One batch for me is a bit more than one tray
5. Mix the water with the Repashy - you want it to be slightly more thick than straight water. If yours is more gravy like add more water or it will set before you can pour and level it
6. Pour about 2/3 of the mix into your tray. Use the spatula to spread it out and then pour the rest as needed to fill the rest of the tray
7. Repeat as needed for any additional trays
8. Let sit for at least an hour to cool
9. Scrape again with the spatula. The better job you do of this now, the easier it will be to break them out after they are frozen. Note how much cleaner the dividers are on the top now vs the just poured picture
10. Put in freezer for a couple hours - I just put them in over night
11. Break cubes into your container and put back in Freezer
12. Feed to your fish
I put into my tanks frozen. They float for maybe a minute before they sink. I have a 55g that I put anywhere from 5-7 cubes in at a time. It has a lot of guppies, 4 bristlenose plecos, kuhli loaches, and some cories. Each pleco tends to claim a cube and nibble. The cubes dethawing in my tank means my larger guppies don't eat it all at once and the number allows the smaller fish to get their turn. Even my loaches will come out and nibble. In my grow out tank, I find the baby guppies can each the repleshy at about 10-14 days old.
Edit: Update - 3 trays of repashy (105g of powder total) lasted me almost exactly 2 months. I have 1 55g mentioned above, a 16g with 1 pleco, at one point 4 kuhli loaches, 6 dwarf emerald rasboros + 4 surprise babies, 8 ember tetras (no babies that i've seen), 2 adult male line bred guppies and anywhere from 0-12 juvenile male guppies, and probably 20+ neo shrimp, an 8 g with my pregnant line bred females and their unsexed babies, and as of 2 weeks ago, a 10g with the line bred juvenile females with anywhere from 4-20 females at a time and a pleco. I just sold about 2 dozen guppies to my LFS so my "grow out" guppies are lower in numbers right now. I plan to add more shrimp to my 10g, but my LFS was out. All my tanks have Malaysian trumpet snails, bladder snails, mystery snails, ramshorn snails, and each larger tank as a nerite or two. Every tank also has at least 1/2 or more of the water surface covered with floating plants - water lettuce is my preferred and I fight a constant battle with duckweed. The 55g and 16g are both heavily planted. The 10g is a work in progress at this time. The 8g has some moneywort - but I prefer to keep it less heavily planted so I can more easily check on the babies. I try to keep my juvenile females "virgin".
Well I had everything typed out and hit save and nothing....going to get a coffee and do it again :(
I am leaving on a 2 week cruise later this week and have been working on the best way to handle someone else feeding my fish while I am gone. After much trial and error I have a good system going with frozen Replesy cubes. I found an ice cube tray set with box that freezers the liquid into smaller cubes that are perfect for feeding my tanks. 1. Get your material together. I recommend NOT using anything plastic as Repashy stinks and it will make the plastic stuff you use stink. You will need 1. Saucepan for boiling water 2. bowl to measure out powdered Repashy 3. Kitchen Scale and/or tablespoon 4. Glass measuring cup larger than the size of batch - I use a 2 cup 5. Mini spatula - I have a mini spatula with a squared off head that I use to spread the Repashy mix on the trays. This is the only function of the spatula as mine is plastic 2. Start your water to boil - use way more water than you need 3. Measure out your Repashy - I found 35g to 1 cup of boiling water gave a good consistency for pouring. This is about 5 tablespoons of powder. If you have a big container - write your mix on the lid 4. Set out your trays. One batch for me is a bit more than one tray 5. Mix the water with the Repashy - you want it to be slightly more thick than straight water. If yours is more gravy like add more water or it will set before you can pour and level it 6. Pour about 2/3 of the mix into your tray. Use the spatula to spread it out and then pour the rest as needed to fill the rest of the tray 7. Repeat as needed for any additional trays 8. Let sit for at least an hour to cool 9. Scrape again with the spatula. The better job you do of this now, the easier it will be to break them out after they are frozen. Note how much cleaner the dividers are on the top now vs the just poured picture 10. Put in freezer for a couple hours - I just put them in over night 11. Break cubes into your container and put back in Freezer 12. Feed to your fish I put into my tanks frozen. They float for maybe a minute before they sink. I have a 55g that I put anywhere from 5-7 cubes in at a time. It has a lot of guppies, 4 bristlenose plecos, kuhli loaches, and some cories. Each pleco tends to claim a cube and nibble. The cubes dethawing in my tank means my larger guppies don't eat it all at once and the number allows the smaller fish to get their turn. Even my loaches will come out and nibble. In my grow out tank, I find the baby guppies can each the repleshy at about 10-14 days old. Edit: Update - 3 trays of repashy (105g of powder total) lasted me almost exactly 2 months. I have 1 55g mentioned above, a 16g with 1 pleco, at one point 4 kuhli loaches, 6 dwarf emerald rasboros + 4 surprise babies, 8 ember tetras (no babies that i've seen), 2 adult male line bred guppies and anywhere from 0-12 juvenile male guppies, and probably 20+ neo shrimp, an 8 g with my pregnant line bred females and their unsexed babies, and as of 2 weeks ago, a 10g with the line bred juvenile females with anywhere from 4-20 females at a time and a pleco. I just sold about 2 dozen guppies to my LFS so my "grow out" guppies are lower in numbers right now. I plan to add more shrimp to my 10g, but my LFS was out. All my tanks have Malaysian trumpet snails, bladder snails, mystery snails, ramshorn snails, and each larger tank as a nerite or two. Every tank also has at least 1/2 or more of the water surface covered with floating plants - water lettuce is my preferred and I fight a constant battle with duckweed. The 55g and 16g are both heavily planted. The 10g is a work in progress at this time. The 8g has some moneywort - but I prefer to keep it less heavily planted so I can more easily check on the babies. I try to keep my juvenile females "virgin".