hello everyone welcome back to shrimp mania today i'm going to show you how to set up
the shrimp tank using under gravel filter boxes so this is the 90 liter tank i have
and i have two under gravel filter boxes many of you guys asking me how many boxes should you use
so the simple answer is if you have a tank less than 70 liter
you can use one box if it more than 70 liters i would recommend to use two boxes
so for example this tank next to it is 40 by 40 by 40 centimeters approximately 55
liters and i use only one box and this tank is the same tank as we're gonna set up is 90 liters
and i'm using two boxes so i would recommend to start your tank without sponge filter and only
adding sponge filter after your cycle completed the reason for that is because you're going to add
a lot of bacterial powder on top of the soil and it's supposed to be stay on the soil if you if you
add your sponge filter is a lot of your bacterial powder will suck with the sponge filter so that's
why i recommend to use a sponge filter only at the end of the cycle so today we're going to use ada
amazonia soil as a new version soil and i think it's the one of the best soil on the market for
caridina shrimp so if you're planning to keep your Caridina shrimp it's better to buy ada amazonia
soil if you can get it so that would be great so let's open the bag and let's fill the boxes
here you go this is how the soil look like it smells very earthy like a fresh earth
okay as you notice i didn't put any media or any sponge at the bottom of the ugf filter
i don't believe you need any media in your shrimp tank as you can see you have lots of
lots of soil here the soils works as a media and it's lots of surface area so you don't have
to use media and media will take a lot of space in your UGF box which which is gonna reduce the
the ability to buffer the ph because the the less soil in the box so i wouldn't recommend
to to use anything in the box except just the soil and as you can see this is the
two liter jug and it's almost almost full jug here but this box is slightly
less than 10 centimeters i made it from glass i think i made it nine centimeter tall
so for the for the bigger box like this which is 10 centimeter you you're probably gonna use about
two little soil so again we don't put anything at the bottom of the box let's let's fill this boxes
so for this volume of the tank we're gonna use about four liter of soil as you can see we we can
save a lot of soil if compared to traditional method if you use traditional method you're
gonna fill up the bottom of the tank about five centimeters right so it's to use about
9 liters 10 liters of soil for this volume of the tank which is about almost three times more soil
so we can save about up to three times of soil compared to traditional method with the same
even better buffering the water so this filter method this filter works very great to buffer
your ph because the water is constantly running through the filter make the soil works very hard
like three four times harder than it's just soaking at the bottom of the tank
that's why this method is very economical allow you to use a very little amount of soil
with the same effect of buffering the water and yeah we're gonna check because i haven't been
used this ada amazonia uh i used to use the old version i have it back here so the old version
works very good and then we use the new version so we're gonna see how it's good for buffering the ph
i think in a few days once we set up the tank not in this video in my later videos i'm gonna check
ph and then compare this soil to the old new version and let you know which soil is better
here you go there the box is filled with the ada amazonian new version and i have here another soil
which called Ista shrimp ph 5.5 and i'm gonna use this soil for the bottom of the tank the reason
for that it looks a little bit more prettier. i'll show you that yes let me show you on this tanks
so not this tank sorry this tank as you can see the grains are a little bit smaller and have
gray color yeah so this soil is look like this so i like how it looks that's why i'm gonna use it
you can see in this tank as well my blue bolts tank yeah so let me zoom it on show you little
babies here yeah there you go so i'm going to use this soil for this tank for the bottom of this
tank yeah so i decided to mix it with a little bit of ada amazonia so just to make a little mix
i don't know if it's gonna be look good or not we're gonna see in a minute so the the amount of
soil for the bottom of the tank so guys another question you always ask me. i wouldn't recommend
to use a lot of soil so this is the main reason we're using ugf boxes so we can use as minimum
as possible soil at the bottom of the tank and the perfect amount of soil is just enough to cover the
whole tank with just one grain thickness of the soil this is because you want to avoid the buildup
waste inside the soil and creating the toxic soil so this is the main issue for the old tanks when
you have a when you have a thick thick amount of soil at the bottom once you feed your shrimps
the the food particles and the feces of the shrimps will sunk down inside the soil
and then they decompose creating ammonia and that's why we're making the the bottom
of the tanks with the minimum soil so the main amount of soil we keep in the boxes
with constant water flowing through the soil and thus do make this soil works much better
and we making the bottom of the tank free of soil just a little bit amount of soil
and when i put the soil when i cycle the tank i try to put the soil in one pile i don't know i
just saw that many asian breeders do that this way and i just copy them and i think the reason
for that is just uh it's better to keep the old soil in one place so you put a bacterial powder
on top of the soil and it's all keep in the same place and when the biofilm
growing is growing inside the soil as well and bacteria start to multiply in the soil i guess
that's why they use only just a pile of soil i don't look i don't think it's look very good
when i mix ada amazonia with another soils look a bit mixed size of the grain but it is what it is,
it should work fine so we create a pile which is about this size of pile i think
it should be another ones once you spread it over the surface it should be enough
it should be about one grain thickness so if it's not enough you can add a little bit more so later
it's no problem or you can just get soil from the boxes put it at the bottom yeah maybe a little
bit more like this. okay here you go we added the soil to the bottom inside the ugf boxes and
the next step is to add some bacterial powder on top of the soil fill it with the water and start
cycling this tank i have some question from you guys and you're asking me which bacterial powder
I'm using and I'm using the bacterial powder came from Shrimp Affair and this powder is originally
from Taiwan and another guy you can buy it from is Tai Cheng so if you are in Singapore definitely
contact Shrimp Affair it's going to be cheaper to buy from shrimp affair but if you're somewhere
else and you can go to to facebook and find this guy tai cheng he is a Taiwanese breeder and
this powder is world famous powder i can see a lot of breeders use this powder and it looks
like this i'm going to show it quickly so it's a yellow powder this powder works very good
for growing biofilm in your tank and a lot of Asian breeders using this powder with a high
success and i highly recommend to use this powder and rule of thumb is to use one gram of powder for
every 10 liter of water so i have a 90 liter tank here i'm gonna use nine grams of this powder and
it's including this spoon in a set and that's mean one gram is two spoons like this uh so for
for this tank i'm gonna use about 18 spoons like this flat and that should be enough i'm gonna
put some of the powder on top of the soil at the bottom and on top of the ugf boxes let's do it now
okay here you go we just added the powder on top of the soil
i approximately evenly distribute the powder over these three places two boxes in one pile
of soil at the bottom so it's about four spoons for that four spoons for that four spoons for that
make about 16 spoons which is approximately nine grams yeah maybe eight or eight and a half nine
grams so now it's time to fill the tank with the water and i would recommend to fill it slowly to
keep all the powder on top of this soil and before i start filling the tank with the water i'm gonna
fill the boxes with water first otherwise they can float and i also gonna add a little bit of
water at the bottom slowly just to cover uh this pile of soil with the water and then i'm going to
fill it slowly with um with the auto top off yeah let's do it now
okay first i want to add a little bit of water at the bottom
make sure you do it slowly so the power to stay on the soil
and then i'm going to add the water inside the boxes
uh
okay here you go we just finished filling this tank with the water
and the water became a little bit milky which is normal from the bacterial powder and most of the
bacterial powder stay on the soil so now all we need to do is to wait for two weeks and then we're
gonna do our first water change about 30-50% of water change. the total time of the cycle is about
eight weeks i would say six weeks would be okay but normally i do eight weeks just in case
uh the longer your wait is better uh because we're using ada amazonia soil don't forget that this
soil is licking ammonia and it's licking ammonia for about six to eight weeks so we before we add
our shrimps we need to make sure that's this soil fully cycled and it's not licking ammonia anymore
so to be safe we're going to wait for eight weeks and every two weeks we're going to do about 30-50%
water change so i'm probably gonna do a second part where i'm gonna do a water changes
and show you uh how is this tank doing and also i'm gonna check for ammonia, nitrates, do some
tests, ph test of the water. i'm very excited to see how this new version of admission works
i hope it works the same as the old one we will see in a couple of weeks i'm gonna check it for
ph and see if it's low enough. okay guys thank you so much for watching. i hope you're enjoying this
little tutorial. i'm gonna keep updating on this tank. i'm probably gonna do another video uh like
part two how to cycle the tank and i will show you the rest until i'm gonna put the shrimps into
this tank and i wish you a merry christmas happy new year and i'll see you in the next video bye