Speaker 1: Hey everyone, Corey from Aquarium Coop.
Today we're going to learn about the nitrogen cycle.
I feel like I haven't done a video like this and I explain it kind of a different way,
that type of thing, and then we're also going to answer this question, how does bacteria
actually colonize?
Just from talking with you guys all the time, I feel like some of you are very visual learners,
so we're going to go ahead and do that today and show it in a physical representation and
hopefully this will break down easy enough that you might not understand why it works,
but you understand how it's kind of working in what you need to know about it.
So stay tuned.
This is the best video I've ever done because I get to eat candy.
I'm kind of an evil genius here.
I devised this whole video as a ploy to buy a pound and a half of peanut butter M&Ms.
But I needed color coded things, right?
It's the only way I could tell my wife I'm buying way too many peanut butter M&Ms.
All right, for this demonstration here, we have three bowls.
What this represents is ammonia, nitrite, underlined with the I, that's the second step,
nitrite, and then the third one, nitrate.
Now, we're going to represent, luckily for me, we're going to represent ammonia with
these yellow colored peanut butter M&Ms.
We're going to represent nitrate with brown colored peanut butter M&Ms and lastly, we're
going to represent nitrate, the last in the steps, as blue peanut butter M&Ms.
So, what happens?
Your fish is going to go to the bathroom, we're going to grab some of these.
There it goes, went to the bathroom.
What we need to have happen next or maybe I should back up a moment and say ammonia,
we clearly have a Mr. Yuck face here.
Ammonia is bad for your fish.
Leads to burning of gills, can lead to fin rot, can lead to lots of bad things for your
fish, right?
So the next step we need is bacteria.
We need at least some bacteria that's going to eat this and make it into nitrate, so the
goal would be we've got something in our aquarium, whether it's an additive, maybe it's live
plants, maybe it's just time on our side, and eventually, we're going to get something
that can eat ammonia and turn it into a brown one, a nitrate.
So there we go.
We've processed some from here to here.
Now, typically, what happens in your aquarium when you're just starting is we're going to
eat another ammonia and we're going to make another nitrate until eventually, we took
out two more, we'll add two more.
We probably look something like that, where we've got some ammonia in the tank and we've
got some nitrite in the tank, but at about this time, we start gaining another bacteria
that will process into nitrate.
Nitrite itself is half as toxic as ammonia and more potent than nitrate, so that's why
we get a half Mr. Yuck face.
He's only going to half die in this.
We've got a lot more leeway for air in this nitrite, even though it's still bad.
Typically, what'll happen is we've got some ammonia, we've got some nitrite here.
Eventually, we're going to get the bacteria that can consume that, then we're going to
get some nitrate there in the form of a blue peanut butter M&M.
We get the smiley face for that because the bacteria's done its job all the way from ammonia,
we use bacteria, we made nitrite, then we used bacteria again to turn this nitrite into
nitrate.
Notice the difference between the A and the I.
If you get those confused, it can be very hard, especially if you're new to fish keeping.
Ideally, what's going to happen.
We're going to process some more ammonia, we're going to make some more nitrite, some
of that's going to get eaten, we're going to make some more blue ones which is nitrate.
And the goal would be, when your tank is cycled, so you're tank is cycled, you've eaten up
all the ammonia, we make some nitrite when we do that.
We've eaten up all of the nitrite and we make some more blue ones and that is nitrate.
When nitrates get in excess amount, let's say we had a whole bunch of those.
The only ways to remove that is either a, water changes, which I'm going to represent
that by me eating them.
Because that's what the humans do.
We water change, we eat them.
This is the best video I've ever done because I get to eat candy.
Maybe we should do some more water changes, hold on.
Yeah, definitely changing more water.
And water's blue, right?
That's why I made them blue.
But anyway.
So we're taking them out.
We can also use live plants to do that.
Live plants will also consume the nitrate, which is helpful.
We took some out because we changed water.
We can take some more out because we had plants eat them.
Now, what happens in a well established tank?
Typically, what's going to happen is, we get some ammonia and that's going to get eaten
up right away, we get some nitrite, that gets eaten up right away, and we end up with two
blue ones, which is nitrate.
Now, if we have the ultimate cycle where we also have plants, two of those got eaten.
Now pretend it's Monday morning, I'm feeding my fish.
Here's five parts ammonia, five parts per million ammonia, it instantly gets eaten up,
hopefully by our bacteria.
And we make four parts per million nitrite and hopefully that instantly gets eaten up
as well and we make three or four five nitrate.
The goal would be, oh man, over the course of a day, the plants ate those, so we had
a perfect system running.
That is the goal, but we could have fish in there that don't allow that, maybe they eat
the plants, that type of thing.
Maybe we don't know how to grow plants yet, so we could always come in, do our water change
and improve it.
Now, a lot of people like to keep this always at zero and you can.
If you're running a fish only tank, you can do that.
But you can see here, every time you feed, you're going to kind of build some of these
up, so a lot of times people do is let that build up over the course of a week or two
and they're feeding their fish and eventually they come in and do a 50% water change, we
take about half those out and we reset back to there, okay?
I think you guys can now understand, we take ammonia which is very toxic, we use the bacteria,
that makes nitrite, notice the I there and the eye, he only has one eye that hurts.
He's only moderately happy.
We use another bacteria and we make another nitrate.
Notice the A there, he's super happy, and then we figure out are we going to do a water
change or are we going to use plants to take that out of the water.
Easy enough.
Now that process could take weeks or months.
It could also be very quick if you get a cycled filter from your local fish store, maybe you
buy some live plants, maybe use an additive, those types of things.
And we call that process, the nitrogen cycle.
All right, that's how you cycle an aquarium.
That was almost dangerous.
I almost lost all my brown M&Ms.
I would have been out of nitrites, video would have been over.
Then we have question number two of the video, how does bacteria colonize?
What?
All right, we're going to talk about that.
Most people think that bacteria lives in their filter and that is true, it does live in your
filter, but it also lives on your gravel, it also lives on the glass itself, so on the
sides of this bowl if these were aquariums, they would be all along the sides, so when
you change water, we're killing the bacteria that's on the glass.
Everything, decorations, wood, rock, everything's going to have some bacteria.
Now, here's where people's logic goes wrong in my opinion.
We are going to change these, we now understand how the nitrogen cycle works.
We need to make these represent different things, so let me get the nitrates out of
here and write some new cards.
Now you can see our three bowls are now three different things.
In bowl number one, this is the biggest bowl I have, this is a canister filter.
In bowl number two, we have the sponge filter.
And in bowl number three, we have aquarium décor, the aquarium glass, the gravel, all
those types of things, okay?
For this demonstration, we're going to use the yellow M&Ms.
Why?
Because they're in my free hand.
What happens is the fish go to the bathroom and let's say you have five fish, okay?
You feed them and they go to the bathroom five parts per million or whatever, right?
So this is just waste.
All right.
Now we can see here, there's a lot of room left in that bowl and tomorrow, they go to
the bathroom five times and the next day they go to the bathroom five times again and again
and again.
Eventually, you're going to see that we're out.
Now it's time to do a water change or whatever we were going to do and you can see here,
we had a lot of room left in that canister filter, right?
Okay.
Now, let's imagine that we didn't have a canister filter, we had a sponge filter and the fish
go to the bathroom five times a day, five times a day, five times a day, you get the
point.
Until eventually, we have that much waste that's been processed by that sponge filter.
You can see it's a smaller bowl.
But the bowl's not full.
Okay, I get that.
The only time this is going to come into play is if we were to exceed this bowl, which we're
not going to do.
Here, we're spending a lot of money, or at least a decent amount of money and we got
a much bigger capacity.
We have a bigger bowl, we bought this big bowl.
The sponge filter, lesser capacity, not as big, in fact, it fits in it with room to spare.
But if we're not utilizing it, this bowl's just big enough or just fine.
Same thing, if we don't have that big of a load, actually aquarium décor, so let's say
we got a rock, we've got the glass, we've got gravel, we've got plants, that kind of
stuff, it's going to process waste and have bacteria on it as well.
We do that every day and eventually you're going to go, well wait a second, now no filter
at all and we had enough bacteria to handle that.
How is that possible?
It's just the way bacteria works.
So now imagine that we have an aquarium and we've got rocks and wood and gravel in it
and some plants.
We have a sponge filter in our aquarium because Corey says those are good and so I bought
one.
Then, I have a big canister filter, too, because the internet says that's the best thing, so
all of these are my aquarium now, right?
I've got three of them.
What actually happens?
Most people would think that this happens.
My aquarium has almost no bacteria at all, my sponge filter is not really doing anything
and my big expensive canister filter, well, I paid a lot of money for it, so clearly,
because it's the biggest, it collects the most.
The reality is that this is what happens, okay?
I now have three bowls.
My fish go to the bathroom and we have established the go to the bathroom five times a day.
One, two, three, four, five.
Okay.
Then tomorrow, they're going to go to the bathroom.
You'd think, well don't you start here?
Nope, we start here, because this is where free space is left to colonize, so one, two,
three, four, five.
One, two, three, four, five.
And we do that a whole bunch of times, right?
We keep feeding our fish, they keep going to the bathroom.
Pretty simple, right?
You got it.
Get the rest of these in here.
So let's say our bowls look like that.
Sure.
Now what would happen if we didn't have the sponge filter?
We take this out.
Well, the load that these were handling would just get split up between whatever was left,
right?
Huh, okay.
So you're telling me I could have worked without that sponge filter at all?
Definitely.
Same thing, if we had taken this canister filter off, we're going to end up splitting
that load between these.
There you go, that's also a working aquarium.
Then, this is what spawned the whole video for me.
People keep moving sponge filters or they move a filter and their tank is cycled, right?
The problem I run into is that they don't realize how much bacteria you're bringing
over.
People see cycled as a binary thing, it's either yes or no.
Really, it's a number, so is it five?
Is it 500?
Is it 5000?
But a cycled sponge to someone is just a thing when really, we need to think about it like
money.
Oh, you have money?
How much?
Is it $5? $50? $500?
Same thing with bacteria, we need to think about how much bacteria do we have.
Let's imagine that we have all of these things going on, right?
We've got some bacteria everywhere, right?
We've got bacteria in our canister filter, we've got it in our sponge filter and we've
got it in our aquarium décor, rocks, that type of thing.
Now we set up a hospital tank and you go, well, I'm going to use this sponge filter.
What happens?
We have this much that we can handle.
It's roughly about one third.
If we had nine neon tetras in this tank and we take the sponge and we put it into a different
aquarium, that aquarium will be able to handle three neon tetras.
It doesn't instantly cycle that aquarium, it brings three neon tetras worth of bacteria.
Now, the good thing is is when you do have some bacteria, it replicates a lot faster.
It can actually double everyday, so today we might have only had that much bacteria,
but tomorrow we'll have that much and the next day, we'll have even more.
Eventually, in that new tank you just set up, you'll have quite a bit of bacteria.
That's a good thing, right?
Yeah.
But people so often think that just because they took it over, day one it started like
this.
It doesn't, it starts with whatever it was.
Meanwhile, since we would have taken this out of the tank, we established all the other
bacteria's going to colonize on different surfaces, and my point is this.
My point is more filtration is more capacity, they're bigger bowls, right?
If you have five canister filters, you have five really big bowls.
But, if you're only doing a bowl full of M&Ms every week, you don't need five gigantic mixing
bowls.
You just need one that can handle this.
I think we get led with fear.
We're afraid we're going to run out.
It's like, you visit grandma's house and she got way too much food, got way too much candy
because she doesn't want anyone to go without, right?
We end up having too much.
Same thing in our aquariums.
We're so afraid we're going to hurt our fish that more filtration is better and this statement
gets said a lot.
You can never have too much.
That's true.
If I have 50 bowls, I can hold a lot more M&Ms.
The reality is we might have wasted a lot of money and space buying bowls when maybe
two was enough, because I had one bowl that was maybe three quarters full and the second
bowl was empty.
I didn't need bowls three, four, five, six, and seven.
But we're led by fear, so that is how I answer the question of what is the nitrogen cycle,
we established that.
We've got ammonia and we use some bacteria, that makes nitrite, and then we use some bacteria,
and the last step, it makes nitrate, and then it's our job to water change or use plants
and that means you get to sit back and eat some peanut butter M&Ms.
That's a good time.
I hope that helps and I hope that helped break it down for you.
I've got a mouthful of peanut butter candy, it's amazing.
I definitely got to figure out more videos I can make with candy, because that's a good
excuse.
Thanks for watching guys.
Hope you enjoyed it.
Share it around to anyone that's new in the hobby.
I think it really helps explain how it goes.
So yeah, we'll see you in the next one.