# Feeding baker yeast to shrimp



## tiger15 (3 Jul 2018)

I feed baker yeast to daphnia culture and seed DIY COs.  Yeast is life food in dormancy.

Will dwarf shrimp eat yeast.  If not, will left over yeast turn tank water into alcohol.


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## Edvet (3 Jul 2018)

Yeast will convert sugars into alcohol, no sugars, no alcohol.


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## zozo (3 Jul 2018)

Mater a fact Carbon Hydrates (sugars) the yeast is a fungus cell, as baker yeast most commonly used is <Saccharomyces cerevisiae>. The fermenting process makes CO² and Alcohol from Sugars (carbon hydrates). Since we have plants in our tanks which have carbon hydrates as main building block (Think of brown cane sugar, made from ... Cane).  We have always a form of sugar secretion into the water column from the plants. 

Now Daphnia as planktonic crustacean live off zooplanktons like single cell algae floating in the water. Or as alternative food source the single yeast cell.

Anyway putting active yeast into aqaurium water and active means the fermentation process already started. Than next to CO² also ethanol is created that's an inevitable process in active yeast.

But as you know since you are doing DIY CO² with yeast you need quite a concentration to make it active.. In a nutshell little left overs in the tank water as long as it is alive and reproducing will create a tiny amount of ethanol but by far no enough to make a gin tonic from your aqaurium water. And yes shrimp might just also feed on the fungus cells. It's probbaly eaten faster than it can reproduce in this condition. After all the fermentation process to create alcohol can only be optimal in absence of oxygen.


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## Edvet (3 Jul 2018)

I remember dissolving a whole package of yeast in my tank long time ago, had a milky tank for a day or two, then it had dissapeared ( 600 liter tank with two Eheim cannisters). Not sure what i wanted to achieve anymore ( it was 1990 or so) but i can't remember any effects, pro or con


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## zozo (3 Jul 2018)

Even dosing alcohol doesn't do much harm..  I red it is a popular custom in the reef community to ad a dose of Vodka to the tank..  I forgot what it is for, but some do.
Also some medication, the tonics are alcoholic and i experienced in the past that adding this can trigger a bacterial bloom, not always but sometimes, dunno what the actual causal combination is when it does and when not.. Maybe the sugar contents of the tank water..


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## tiger15 (3 Jul 2018)

Edvet said:


> I remember dissolving a whole package of yeast in my tank long time ago, had a milky tank for a day or two, then it had dissapeared ( 600 liter tank with two Eheim cannisters). Not sure what i wanted to achieve anymore ( it was 1990 or so) but i can't remember any effects, pro or con


Why do you do that and what’s in the tank? 

When I put Baker yeast in daphnia culture water, it will disperse and turn milky temporarily.  Daphnia will clear it up like clearing green water.  Daphnia is filter feeder that consumes micros (bacteria, algae, yeast/fungus) in the water column.

I’m not sure if shrimp can consume micros in the water column as they are grazer, not filter feeder I am aware of.  If yeast don’t get eaten by shrimp, where will they go?  Will they swim off or drift off to find sugar food and survive or be eaten by micros starting a food chain shrimp is on top.


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## zozo (3 Jul 2018)

If you have a shrimp tank only without fish, than give it a realy close look and you might find a lot of other organisme living in the tank. Crustaceans like cyclops etc. Rotifers and all have simmular diet..  If i look in my shrimp tank, an old one with a curved glass panel, that's in my case the back panel because it's a pain to clean it and don't like it anyway. So i never clean the back panel it's always covered in algae. Looking realy close the whole back panel is always littered with some tiny creatures bouncing up and down the glass. Never took a sample to look what they exactly are, but they live happily along side the shrimps.  I never did put  them in, myself intentionaly.. So i guess they live in every shrimp tank. But if there are fish too, than it would be much harder to spot them, than they hide and live in the plants and nooks and crannies..


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## tiger15 (3 Jul 2018)

zozo said:


> Even dosing alcohol doesn't do much harm..  I red it is a popular custom in the reef community to ad a dose of Vodka to the tank..  I forgot what it is for, but some do.


I know why.  Reef tanks thrive on live sand.  Vodka provides a carbon source for denitrificaion.


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## jcspotless (13 Apr 2019)

Adding ethanol to a tank seems like madness to me. Ethanol is cytotoxic i.e kills cells. Seems to me you risk killing your tank bacteria with risk of associated ammonia spike when they die. Like all things it is about dose and amount of exposure but I think caution should be applied before adding ethanol to any tank!


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## dw1305 (13 Apr 2019)

Hi all,





tiger15 said:


> Will dwarf shrimp eat yeast. If not, will left over yeast turn tank water into alcohol.


I don't think they will eat yeast, if there are sugars available the yeast will proliferate and potentially remove oxygen from the water column. I used to use yeast for my _Daphnia_ cultures, but it is always boom and bust.

We've been down this route before in the <"Exploring yeast...."> thread.





tiger15 said:


> or be eaten by micros starting a food chain shrimp is on top.


May do, it would be down to amount of yeast.





zozo said:


> Now Daphnia as planktonic crustacean live off zooplanktons like single cell algae floating in the water. Or as alternative food source the single yeast cell.


It is like Marcel (@zozo) says they sieve particles, of a certain size, from the water column. They don't select, it is purely a size thing. Paprika and gram flour works quite well as _Daphnia_ feed.  





tiger15 said:


> Vodka provides a carbon source for denitrificaion.


It does.





jcspotless said:


> Like all things it is about dose and amount of exposure but I think caution should be applied before adding ethanol to any tank!


I can't see any advantage either.

cheers Darrel


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