You must be wondering what the hell is that? Its a shrimp. A piece of shrimp rather. The filter and the chiller are both up and running, marine salt has been added and now there's salt water running through the system. Till now its just a tank with 'no' life in it and here's where the nitrogen cycle begins. The shrimp was dropped in to introduce ammonia into the aquarium. The shrimp will rot and from the past couple of pics, the tank water is rather clear and subsequent pictures that I post will show cloudy tank water. I dropped the shrimp in at 10am today and after going to sch and back, there's a little stench if you sniff the surface of the water. Good sign, rotting has begun and the shrimp has began to decolor. The shrimp will rot and leech ammonia NH3/NH4 into the water, and this where naturally occuring bacteria will feed on that ammonia and multiply forming bacteria colonies. Ammonia levels will increase as the shrimp rots and so will the bacteria colonies because they have more to feed on. It will come a point in time that the rate of rotting is exceeded by the number of bacteria colonies and ammonia levels will start to drop. That is part 1 of the nitrogen cycle.
The filters that i've installed are what we call biological filters. It is not designed to remove physical waste from the aquarium but they are more like a bacteria farm to house bacteria colonies that will help break down waste in the aquarium. So imagine that waste from fish are broken down into harmless natural occuring substances. It becomes an all natural aquarium. Fish eat food and shit and feed the bacteria and in turn cleans up the water. Perfect relationship. So here you see a pick of these 'cocopops'. They're actually special media that's super porous and so provdes alot of surface area for bacteria to populate. The bacteria farm behind the aquarium.
You must be wondering what the hell is that? Its a shrimp. A piece of shrimp rather. The filter and the chiller are both up and running, marine salt has been added and now there's salt water running through the system. Till now its just a tank with 'no' life in it and here's where the nitrogen cycle begins. The shrimp was dropped in to introduce ammonia into the aquarium. The shrimp will rot and from the past couple of pics, the tank water is rather clear and subsequent pictures that I post will show cloudy tank water. I dropped the shrimp in at 10am today and after going to sch and back, there's a little stench if you sniff the surface of the water. Good sign, rotting has begun and the shrimp has began to decolor. The shrimp will rot and leech ammonia NH3/NH4 into the water, and this where naturally occuring bacteria will feed on that ammonia and multiply forming bacteria colonies. Ammonia levels will increase as the shrimp rots and so will the bacteria colonies because they have more to feed on. It will come a point in time that the rate of rotting is exceeded by the number of bacteria colonies and ammonia levels will start to drop. That is part 1 of the nitrogen cycle.
The filters that i've installed are what we call biological filters. It is not designed to remove physical waste from the aquarium but they are more like a bacteria farm to house bacteria colonies that will help break down waste in the aquarium. So imagine that waste from fish are broken down into harmless natural occuring substances. It becomes an all natural aquarium. Fish eat food and shit and feed the bacteria and in turn cleans up the water. Perfect relationship. So here you see a pick of these 'cocopops'. They're actually special media that's super porous and so provdes alot of surface area for bacteria to populate. The bacteria farm behind the aquarium.
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