Dch48 wrote: ↑Thu May 21, 2020 1:48 pm
Okay, just to clarify. I meant gas exchange, not air exchange. The air in an ecosphere allows that. During light periods, oxygen is produced by the plant life and released and CO2 is absorbed into the water from the air above it to fuel the oxygen production. At night, the exact opposite happens. If they were completely full of water, there would be no exchange and things would die. Therefore it does matter. The surface area is never useless since the larger it is, the more exchange occurs. Even in a sealed container. The surface area is there to exchange gaseous components of the air and not the air as an entirety. If your shipping bags allow gas exchange then they are filling the role of the surface area and actually becoming it. An ecosphere has no such ability.
Sure the sea fan decomposition would be caused by bacteria but they are not what will be absorbed by the macroalgae. Their byproducts, ammonia and Nitrite, are what gets absorbed. Those same bacteria are always present in any tank and are necessary.
These are just basic facts of the aquarium hobby.
Usually, I would not continue this in someone else's thread, but there is just so much wrong with what you wrote that it absolutely needs to be clarified, so that people who read this do not think we are spreading wrong information in this forum.
First of all...the "plants produce oxygen in the ecosphere and keep the shrimp alive, and the shrimp produce CO2 for the plants" is total nonsense and marketing. The little string algae that the company puts in there dies very quickly usually, and there are lots of ecospheres out there that have no plants and are in pretty dark places. Simple fact: The shrimp slowly starve to death, and it takes a long time because they are genetically special. Pretty much ever other animals would just die quickly. But plants in the ecosphere are not the topic here. Keep reading.
Second, the CO2 or any gas ( since "air" is a mixture of gases) does not get "absorbed into the water from the air above" in the ecosphere as you say. The CO2 in the water that is produced by animals or possible plants is already dissolved in the water as carbonic acid. It does not need to get in there from the "air above" as you claim. If anything, some of that carbonic acid will leach into the air pocket above. Same with any gases that are in the water, including oxygen. So, yes, the air pocket in the ecosphere is completely useless. The total oxygen or CO2 in the sealed container is not dependent on any air pockets or the size of the air pocket. It's still the same even if the ecosphere is completely filled with water. Again...it's *sealed*. Not sure what else I need to say to convey the meaning of "saled" and how that prevents gas exchange with the outside air, which is what the rest of us here is talking about. This is really, really simple chemistry and physics.
Third, "gas exchange"
*obviously* refers to gas exchange with the outside air (i.e. our planet's atmosphere), not to any exchange between an air pocket in some sealed container and the water. That would make no sense. The whole point of "sealed" is that any oxygen in the container is not being replenished by the oxygen entering from the outside world (i.e. no gas exchange). If the oxygen is used up, it's gone. In a sealed container there is no gas exchange
with the outside air, no matter how big the air pocket is. That was what got this whole discussion started, remember?
Fourth, it does not matter that the bacteria are always there...they are there in small numbers. They *explosively* reproduce when they find organic matter to metabolize ("eat"). That is what is causes problems. You are completely ignoring, or not understanding, what I wrote about the bacteria actually using up all the oxygen rapidly in such situations *AND* producing ammonia *much* more rapidly than any plants can absorb. Result: shrimp die "mysteriously."
Finally:
The surface area is there to exchange gaseous components of the air and not the air as an entirety.
What? "Air" is a mixture of gases. There are no "gaseous components" of the air that are somehow separate from the rest of "air", whatever that may be. It is *all* gases. This, unfortunately, shows a complete lack of understanding of basic chemistry. OF COURSE the air gets "entirely" exchanged, not just imagined and never before heard "gaseous components of the air", which I assume you must think are separate from what? Solid components? Liquid components? These kinds of statements are really baffling...
Ok, this is really the last I am going to write about this. Yes, the things I mentioned in this thread are "basic facts" as you write above, so it puzzles me why you do not know about them, and then do not want to accept them when these basic facts are presented to you, but instead continue saying things that are just plain wrong.
You are currently spreading
*dangerously* wrong information that cannot be left in this forum without the kind of clarification and rebuttal I am providing right now. After all, I want people reading this to be *correctly* informed, and not do any risky or dangerous things that will eventually kill their shrimp and ruin the hobby for them. And all, because they relied on *provably* wrong information that should not even be here given how basic this information is, and how easily it can be looked up on the internet.
That's it. This thread has been hijacked enough. The original poster has been helped and now knows what to do. If you have any further issues to discuss, just contact me through private messaging here in the forum so I can clarify any more questions or issues you might have. Before you do that, though, I do encourage you you read up on these "basic facts" a few more times, because just being in the hobby for decades does not make up for having the right information. We want to be a responsible forum and website here, so giving out wrong information is the last thing we should be doing, especially since this information is so basic and easily looked up.
And they *then* realease nitrogen, such as ammonia, which other microorganisms eat...and they all use up oxygen. Trust me, there are plenty of people here who had sudden die offs with zero (measurable) ammonia or nitrite but organic materials in their tanks (such as driftwood, leaves, sea fans etc.). I actually just got another two emails from people who just started tanks with sea fans and got a "sudden die off" when they received their shrimp. It's really a very common pattern. Too common.