Duckweed Duckweed Duckweed. Today, we're going
to be doing a video on how you can make food from duckweed. Yes, I know it sounds absurd
but this stuff is actually really really good shrimp food- it’s roughly between 20 and
40 percent protein, it’s full of goodness, it’s free and I know a lot of you guys will
consider this like the aquarium [herpes] of the fish tank world but trust me it's not.
What I do with this is I let it grow to about ¾ of the surface area of the tank and then
I harvest it with my net, okay, then I put it into a bucket like over here, for example,
and I will let it sink in this bucket for at least a day; the reason I do that is because
often when you take it out to the tanks there will be baby shrimp in all the roots of this
stuff, okay? So, you want to leave it and let it sit for a day; you can go like this
with your hand and pull it back then and then you bend it and see if there’s any baby
shrimp in there. The other thing that is pretty good, pretty awesome about duckweed as well
is it's a good indicator of how healthy your tank is- if the duckweed is very green like
this one that means it's pulling quite a bit of nutrients inside the water as this one
is growing, specifically and particularly quite well, so if it is not like this then
there could be an issue. So it's a good indicator of water quality as well, it's also really
good area for your shrimp to sit in and foliage like this, you see, count how many shrimps
are up there, count them- that’s me looking at one part of the tank.
Okay, so every week I do this I do three each time and I can take it with my green net here,
lots of duckweed but I put it into that bucket that I’ve just shown you and then I freeze
it- I drain all the water, I squeeze it then I drain all the water and then I freeze it.
And this is why I have left over here, this is from about two or three weeks’ worth
and that is a lot, okay? This is drained of all the water, so you can just see how much
is in here. I have made this before, I've also sent out to a few to you guys as a sample
in some of the stuff that you order from me and this is what it looks like, basically.
I want to take a couple of this over here and we're going to put in the tank and we’re
going to go back to it once we've made this food right. So, this is what it looks like,
alright? We are going to put it into this tank here, right? And the time that we have made this
the new food we will see if the shrimp like this stuff. You can already tell it's going
to be a winner, can’t you guys? Okay, so we're going to go over here and I’m going
to make a food, the process is pretty simple; you're going to liquidate the stuff then you
have to dry it out basically. The binder I use for these, guys, is [Pollen] because Pollen
has its own benefits as well as full of goodies. First, we're going to use this stuff here.
So this should be simple enough, put our stuff in here, it’s so gross (urrgh). I’m going
to try not make mess with this as well, guys, because it is quite messy this stuff. Now
this does have a water content so we're going to try it first without adding any water,
let’s see how this goes. Now this was ice and it’s really soft so it should be okay,
let’s see, one two three… I think I may need to add some water to this just to get
it to pour out and to get it to sit in the bottom, in the [buttocks], let me see… it's
not even moved even a little bit so let's go and get some water, a little bit water
- should I use stuff from the fish tank? I don’t have fish, oh my God, did I say fish
tank? Let's use some stuff from the shrimp tank, a little bit. We’re going to want
to put enough in here, then it relaxes, be relaxed, there you go see it relaxing. You
want to basically do this until it starts to blend, okay? So, let's go… one two three…
there you go… as soon as I add the water it made it [lose thickness] and with this-
I think this is water place so I could turn up and be doing, got to hold it tight. Oh
please God… so we are going to smash this up, we’re going to blend it really well.
Let’s see how this now looks; it doesn't have to be super smooth, huh that looks really
good to me. And so what we’re going to do with this is I'm going to put into this bowl
here and that is the first [lump] done- looks lovely, doesn’t it? Green goop. And so we
go over and get the next load, I think I'm going to put a little bit more in this time.
You know what’s really interesting is the water in there, can you see it? It's like
purple from the duckweed- I didn't notice some of the leaves were purple so… I think
that may be enough. Well, this some little bit water again, a little bit less water this
time, just to get the duckweed to relax. And by the way, guys, this isn’t waterproof
so I won't be turning it upside-down again. And so we are going to add a couple of spoons
of montmorillonite clay to the food and it's a very very small amount, okay? We're going
to also add some Pollen- we're going to do this a little bit of time because I don't
want this to thicken up too much- if you're even looking at it, my bad guys, I didn't
realize you were looking. So this is Pollen, feed of the gods, yeah I know you're going
to love it. Okay, so we have our Pollen and our duckweed, let’s blend it. It’s bad
so get hold your breath… alright, let’s put a little bit more in. I’m probably going
to put a whole bag of this in. Alright, that was really good actually, it's [litter], I
can actually smell the Pollen from this thing. And so we’re going to put it in here, there’s
difference in the color… oh what is that, come out here, I’ve broken it… see the
difference in color, it's like a light green now I can put too, before it was really dark
green, still very very liquidy though, okay? So what we're going to do with this, guys,
is I’m going to get a spatula and I'm going to give that a good mix. Alright let’s give
this a good… oh my god, look how thick it is, let's give it a good mix up because the
second part of this light green stuff has the Pollen in it and that is what we're using
as a binding agent- you can't of course use a gar, if you want to use a gar then of course
you’d have to boil the gar for a couple minutes, so this is the way I did it the last
time so… do a good stir and this looks like a lot of food, my shrimps absolutely love
this as well which I'll show you once we get this into the tray, I’ll show you what it
looks like. I think that's mixed enough, alright so that is a lot of food.
We're now going to pour it onto our tray. The way you could do this as well is with
grease proof paper, I put some water underneath so it sticks quite well. I’m going to air-dry
this, guys, so this means I'm not going to put it into an oven. I'm going to air-dry
it- I'm going to leave it somewhere to dry itself and then I'm probably going to put
it all the way up here, you know, on top of my boiler up there because it's very very
warm up there and it will dry even further; this is how I did it with this stuff and this
stuff is really good. So let's get this done. Alright, truly dark for you, truly dark for
you to see. So here we have our duckweed shrimp food, let’s get much of this goodness over
here. I think this is probably one of those type of foods that could be a super super
food for the human race if we put a minds to it, alright? So, I'm just going to lightly
spread this out a little bit- I don't want it to be too thick- this extra stuff can just
be anything. I'm going to give this a little bit of top-down like this which helps to even
it, even the surface, have any of you guys ever mixed cement you’ll know how this works,
you’ll see how it's like liquefying on the top, this where you level something like this,
it will actually bring most of the water to the top and then the water will evaporate
and your product will be level. So what we're going to do now is, this may take one or two
days for this to set properly, so of course as always for you it will be one moment.
Hello and welcome back! It’s been more than a week, I actually forgot all about this food
and it’s been very very kind of brittle, it’s like chocolate, it’s brittle but
it’s tough and ideally you want to cut it out before it gets this hard because we're
trying cut this up now but it's just going to break as you can see. But what we're going
to do guys is we're going to do the taste test like we always do… not me though, shrimps
‘ll do the taste test we're going to put it in a bit. We're going to wait ten minutes
and we shall be right back. [Song: Aquatic Planet starts]
Duckweed can be used as a biofuel Let’s have a look in here. I put two pieces
in here and some of them went in the back, you can see that one over there, there’s
another piece right in the front here and there on it as well. I feed this tank yesterday
so they're not as ravenous as they normally would be. It’s the same with these guys
cos they don't feed every single day but they are on it anyway so they must like it.
Thank you for watching guys, if you want to see more video and more content like this
please subscribe and give me a thumbs up and I'll catch you on the next one. Love you loads.
Happy Shrimping guys.