Hello guys welcome to Mark Shrimps Tanks.
Today I'd thought I'd come and sit with you in the shrimp room and we'd talk about
cycles in general.
There's much more than simply nitrogen's cycle happening in a shrimp tank, so let's
go over them I thought this would make a good video in the morning because I'm drinking
my cup of coffee… it's so good.
Okay, so basically, what we want to start with are the things that we put in the tank,
everything that is alive will produce something- the waste and the one we always look at is
the nitrogen's cycle.
There's another cycle as well that goes on in a tank that is probably just as important
or if not more important because without it nothing would be alive, okay?
And this is the relation of plants producing oxygen and there are animals like fish and
shrimp etc. producing CO2 okay?
We have shrimp that produce ammonia through poop and pee and they produce other things
like CO2 through the breathing and this goes into the water, co2 goes into the water and
is absorbed by these plants and plants take it up as a food source and then they in turn
change into oxygen- this is where we get this thing called… what are they called guys? pearling - you know when you get plants, when you have an abundance of co2 in the tank,
this is where pearling comes from because this, they're absorbing so much co2, the pearling
rate is most optimum, okay?
So that's where that side of that tank cycle happens.
There's another part that we all know a bit as well as, it's the nitrogen cycle, let's
go back to the shrimp again- this beautiful brother here.
Shrimps produce ammonia right?
Ammonia is then thrown into the tank, ammonia's quite deadly but it's a necessary element
in life to get things going basically okay?
So we have the ammonia free-floating in the tank, ammonia is nh3 by the way, in case you
don't know that, the things that are in our substrate on the glass etc. and biofilm
will start to convert the ammonia into nitrites which is NO2, No2.
And there's quite a few different types of bacteria that do this and then they in turn
convert that nitrite and into nitrates which is NO3 okay?
And then that is thrown back into the tank, this is why we're talking about cycles, it's
not just about the shrimp right, because your whole tank has to be healthy and when the
NO3 is produced that is basically a really good food source for your plants and then
it's a fertilizer again.
So that is basically a tank cycle and I don't know as in layman's terms guys, I'm not very
good with my words but that is the best way I can explain it.
There's another thing we have to consider as well as the things that we've put into
our tanks like food for example, if we overfeed our tank, there will be an absolutely huge
buildup of nitrates and what tends to happen is the tank can't cope with it, a lot of new
tanks simply won't have enough bacteria in the tank to cope with you putting so much
food in.
The only thing that could happen as a result of this is there is like an excess of ammonia
and excess of nitrates and it eventually will kill your little shrimp and there's still
a knock-on effect from this as well, once that little shrimp dies, shrimp to me that
I found to be especially, I don't know what to call it guys, they are especially poignant
when it comes to producing vast amounts of ammonia okay?
Now if you have one shrimp die in your tank and you don't see it, they can create like,
what's it called?
You know there's one after or the other, I can't remember the name.
It can create like an event that like, that where it doesn't stop eventually your little
shrimp here will die therefore it'll be producing ammonia, he'll be producing more
and more ammonia, more nitrates, etc. and it will kill the next shrimp, see this little
bitty over here?
It will kill him.
And then what will happen is if you don't still don't see one of these two that are
dead, they will produce more ammonia and more toxins that are sitting in your water and
they will kill your next shrimp wherever that one will be okay?
So it's very important when you keep something, you do not overfeed it.
That's why sometimes when people ask me, Mark how much should I feed my shrimp?
The real question is what size is your tank?
How many shrimp can it basically hold?
What is the capacity basically of your tank to look after shrimp?
If there's such an event where one shrimp dies, can you kind of cope with it?
I find in my tank, specifically, even with small numbers of shrimp it can be a huge problem
if you have one shrimp that dies and you don't see it.
Chain of events, that's the word I was looking for, for one shrimp dies, it starts a chain
of events.
It's often very hard to get out.
If you ever have that problem where you're having deaths in your tank and you find the
whole dead shrimps, the best thing you could do right is to look everywhere in your tank,
look under all your plants, your rocks etc. look for those dead shrimps, remove them because
when they go off, they're literally putrid ammonia producing machines okay?
So you want to remove them.
The next best thing to do after that is do a decent size water change.
If you make your own water with RO water you can do a pretty big water change as long as
you match the temperature, the TDS etc. okay?
Now the next thing that you can do is, the number one thing that leads up to all of these
events is overfeeding, okay?
So we're just back to square one which I just talked about with people asking me how much
food I feed my shrimp?
It is different from tank to tank, it's very hard for me to say how much I feed this tank
to this tank.
Like for example, look up here, no food in here because of the shrimps in here, this
tank is very big, it has a lot of bio film, there will be 20+ something here just now,
I know this babies in here as well.
This one here is 20-something here as well, a pinto tank.
This one in here, there is 50 to 60-something here.
The ones where I have lots and lots of shrimps I feed more than tanks that don't have anything.
Now, this is a very good example, this tank, I have to feed this one nearly every single
day or what I see happening is cannibalism.
Cannibalism will normally happen when you're not feeding the shrimps enough, one shrimp
will molt and the other ones will get excited and it will be basically eaten alive.
There are other things you can look at as well guys for other indicators on how healthy
your tank is, this is how to do the cycles as well.
I'm a big advocate of duck-weed in your tanks, I know a lot of people hate it but duck-weed
is like a big indicator of how healthy your tank actually is.
One of the ways you can tell just how healthy is it's by the growth rate of your duck
weed, and its color it's also important as well, it's root length is very important.
I have another video coming up pretty soon that will tell you more about that because
it's also an excellent feed source.
Let's go down to this tank here because I have had a few problems with this tank lately
and it is noticeable look at the duck weed, it may not really show up here for you guys
but a lot of my duck weed in this tank is opaque and ether very small or dying.
And so that means, to me… let me show you a little bit more in this tank and then give
you a better idea, I trimmed this water spray in here last week but look how small it is,
it hasn't grown, I have loads of algae on that filter, you see?
And what's happening here is people might say, "Oh you have loads of algae, you must
have too many nutrients in your tank".
Well, in this case, it is the opposite, okay?
Algae steps in when there is not enough nutrients in my opinion, you can see that with the plants,
that weed's telling me they don't have enough nutrients, that they're growing small and
thin, some of my faster-growing plants aren't growing at all.
So I know this plant suffers from a nutrient deficiency, I can directly add nutrients into
the water column which I have been doing with this as a like short term thing but ideally,
if you have this kind of thing where you have a huge amount of algae, [string] algae especially,
and what is in your substrate okay?
This one I changed recently but I did it lazily, I put this substrate on top of old substrate
which is a bad idea because new substrate is negatively charged, old substrate was negatively
charged but it has lost its capability to absorb things okay?
So you basically have a dead soil- I have a living soil on top and beneath and it can
create problems with the nitrogen cycle as we've just talked about.
I think the female has moved in here, so that is my plans on this tank, I'll probably redo
this one relatively soon.
You can see like the little mass of string algae on top of here and it's quite noticeable
in other tanks as well.
Tanks that don't have active substrates they will have a little bit more algae.
Here's a great example here, this one is a relatively new tank and look how green and
lush it is, you will be hard-pressed to find any real algae in here, you can't get
the java mosses for example, and then you go to tank next to it that was probably made
few months before look at the difference.
And all the stones here is full of string algae.
I took a lot of algae out here yesterday, especially this fuzz type algae, this
plant here hasn't ever been trimmed, look as small as… this is water sprite… so this
is normally a fast-growing plant, that gives you an idea some of the water chemistry that
we face in shrimp keeping.
So I hope that was basic enough for you guys, I did kind of blather my words a lot
because I know I can… so hope you find this video kind of a little bit helpful and I'll
catch you all in the next video.
Happy shrimp keeping you guys, thank you for watching.
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