Your Questions About Recycling

The Expert answers:

Your tank will still be cycled. The bacteria responsible for cycling attach to the substrate and the filter media, so as long as you’re only removing water, you don’t have to worry about that aspect. But your puffers may look a little bloated until all the worms digest.

The puffers may have been swimming near the surface because that’s where the more oxygenated water is after the filter is off for some time – the oxygen is absorbed into the water from the surface, and the filter circulates the oxygenated water throughout the tank.

Really, if you feed the bloodworms correctly, you should have only needed to use a gravel vacuum (or even some air tubing so you remove less water and can target the worms more directly) to remove the extra. Instead of risking dropping in an entire cube, thaw them in a small container of water and strain them through a fine-meshed net (brine shrimp net). Then you can pick as many as you want from the net and put the rest in a small amount of water and refrigerate until the next day (be sure to label the container as “fish food”). This keeps all the organic material from the worms which causes the red/brown discoloration (and adds excess nutrients to the tank that the puffers can’t use) from getting in the tank in the first place, so it doesn’t contribute to the ammonia and nitrite being formed.

Since puffers are sensitive to ammonia and nitrite, another tip I’ll give you is not to change the filter media as often as you’re told by the instructions. It may clog, but you can put the media in a clean container with some old tank water (removed during a water change) or new dechlorinated water and squeeze it out a few times. This will clean the places where there’s debris trapped, but you won’t harm the bacteria as you would if you rinsed the media under tapwater with chlorine. This leaves more of the bacteria in the tank where it can keep on removing the ammonia and nitrite by convertiing it to nitrate.

Just be sure you have around 5 gallons per puffer in your tank, and only one male. These guys are territorial.

The Expert answers:

YOUR local rubbish tip should have an area/bin put aside for things like those items
hope that this helps,
and keep up the good work with your re-cycling

The Expert answers:

Nitrogen is constantly being recycled in the nitrogen cycle. Here is how:

1. The atmosphere contains about 78% nitrogen gas, N2. This is very unreactive so it can’t be used directly by plants or animals.
2. Nitrogen is needed for making proteins for growth, so living organisms have to get it somehow.
3. Plants get their nitrogen from soil, so nitrogen in the air has to be turned into nitrogen compounds before plants can use it. Animals can only get proteins by eating plants or other animals.
4. Decomposers break down proteins in rotting plants and animals, and urea in animal waste, into ammonia. So the nitrogen in these organisms is recycled.
5. Nitrogen fixation is the process of turning N2 from the air into nitrogen compounds in the soil which plants can use. There are two main ways this happens:
a) Lightning- there’s so much energy in a bolt of lightning that it’s enough to make nitrogen react with oxygen in the air to give nitrates.
B) Nitrogen-fixing bacteria in roots and soil.
6) There are four different types of bacteria involved in the nitrogen cycle:
a) Decomposers- decompose proteins and urea and turn them into ammonia.
B) Nitrifying bacteria- turn ammonia in decaying matter into nitrates.
C) Nitrogen-fixing bacteria- turn atmospheric N2 into nitrogen compounds plants can use.
D) Denitrifying bacteria- turn nitrates back into N2 gas. This is of no benefit to living organisms.

The Expert answers:

There is no ATP cycle, but ATP can be recycled.
ATP is adenosine and 3 organic phospates. When the three phospahtes are bonded together, they are ATP so energy is stored in the bonds. When a phoshate group breaks off, energy is released and ATP becomes ADP. To turn it back to ATP, ADP is phosphorylated, meaning a phosphate group is added to it. The energy is stored in the bonds again

The Expert answers:

It depends on how you reprocess the fuel. Fast reactors can be what is on a closed fuel cycle. That what breeder reactors do… They usually make fuel for themselves.

But you can take the fuel from a PWR (pressurized water reactor) or a BWR (boiling water reactor) and reprocess it as a mixed (U and Pu) oxide fuel or MOX for short. MOX fuel can be used in PWR, BWR, and fast reactors.

A lot of countries are pushing efforts on fast reactors that can also be fueled by other lanthanides and actinides like Np, Am, Cm, Ea,…. Look up the ORIENT fuel cycle or the DOVITA program. I suggest you Google it. DOVITA stuff is a little tricky to find b/c it is just a set of guide lines putting together other technologies to make a fuel cycle for fast reactors to run on actinides.

Some of these fission products spontaneously fission or grab up neutrons in PWRs or BWRs or thermal reactors by making them fun less efficient. If these advanced fuel cycles are used, then we can reduce spent fuel waste to the lighter isotopes like Sr-90, Cs-137,… This will decrease storage time form a thousands to millions of years to only 300 years.

It is possible we just need to do more R&D to implement it on a large scale. An some of these newer reactors need better materials.

The Expert answers:

“There are three main types of rocks: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. Each of these types of rocks are formed in different ways and each type of rock can be changed into each of the other types of rock. Geologists call this process the Rock Cycle. Essentially the rock cycle is the process that makes and recycles rocks.”

http://kidsgeo.com/geology-for-kids/0025B-rock-cycle.php

The Expert answers:

Nutrient Recycling, in a simple layman’s term, is known as waste management. A lot of natural “waste” is often full of nutrients which can be converted to nutrients via recycling.

A primitive example, perhaps, is the use of manure as natural fertilizer in an ecological manner. Think of a cycle which starts with Animal waste or manure, used as fertilizer. This becomes nutrient for plants and crops, which become nutrients for live stocks, which turn into meat, poultry, eggs, etc, which turn into nutrients for human beings. The cycle continues with how we treat the human waste later on, etc.

Same can we said of the way we recycle our water.

These are simple explanations for Nutrient Recycling. However, there are many other more complicated and scientific forms too.

One such example is the use of human waste in space. Astronauts on long missions, or those living and working in the Space lab, can recycle their body waste to produce potable water for use in bathrooms.

Today we are cleaning up lakes by introducing living algae, which can purify the water and live on recycled dead plankton cells. There are many such examples of this process in our homes and outside of our homes. Some are very simple and natural, others require a more intricate human involvement.

I hope the above gives you a small glimpse into the wonderful world of nutrient recycling.

The Expert answers:

Nitrogen is constantly being recycled in the nitrogen cycle. Here is how:

1. The atmosphere contains about 78% nitrogen gas, N2. This is very unreactive so it can’t be used directly by plants or animals.
2. Nitrogen is needed for making proteins for growth, so living organisms have to get it somehow.
3. Plants get their nitrogen from soil, so nitrogen in the air has to be turned into nitrogen compounds before plants can use it. Animals can only get proteins by eating plants or other animals.
4. Decomposers break down proteins in rotting plants and animals, and urea in animal waste, into ammonia. So the nitrogen in these organisms is recycled.
5. Nitrogen fixation is the process of turning N2 from the air into nitrogen compounds in the soil which plants can use. There are two main ways this happens:
a) Lightning- there’s so much energy in a bolt of lightning that it’s enough to make nitrogen react with oxygen in the air to give nitrates.

The Expert answers:

We recycle because, while things that we use WILL recycle themselves, their cycle takes so long that it’s almost not like it’s ever done..
You can’t look at one item that is recycled and make such a general statement. If the items being recycled can be useful again, and, thereby, cut down on the amount of raw materials that must be used to make NEW things, then, recycling is a very good way to go.