Curious to know if shrimp are able to absorb calcium if they have a vitamin difficency.

Reason I ask is humans can not absorb calcium if vitamin d levels is down.

It also raises other question re the importance of light to absorb vitamin d to aid calcium obsorbtion.

My head scratcher for the day hmmm

Wow, what an awesome question! I'm really interested the hear an answer on this one, it's questions like that which make me wish I was a molecular biologist, lol. :victorious:

Short answer = Yes.

That's why we go on and on about water Hardness (GH), the measure of quantity of divalent salts in the water.

The hardness of a water sample is reported in milligrams per liter (same as parts per million, ppm) as calcium carbonate (mg/l CaCO3). Calcium carbonate hardness is a general term that indicates the total quantity of divalent salts present and does not specifically identify whether calcium, magnesium and/or some other divalent salt is causing water hardness. Hardness can be a mixture of divalent salts. In theory, it is possible to have water with high hardness that contains no calcium. Calcium is the most important divalent salt in fish culture water.

Calcium has an important role in the biological processes of fish and shrimp. It is necessary for bone formation, blood clotting and other metabolic reactions. Fish and shrimp can absorb calcium for these needs directly from the water or food. The presence of free (ionic) calcium at relatively high concentrations in culture water helps reduce the loss of other salts (e.g. sodium and potassium) from fish body fluids (i.e. blood). And for shrimp, calcium is required for development of their carapace (shell).

This is where magnesium comes into play. Without magnesium, the calcium is not made available for absorption by the fish or shrimp.

You can dose all the Calcium sulphate in the world but if there is not enough magnesium, it will be useless.

See BlueBolts post in Water Parameters for dosage levels.

I also wrote an article about calcium/magnesium called "Why the need for Calcium & Magnesium", which recommends a target level of calcium to aim for in freshwater tanks.

That's an excellent answer jayc but I'm not sure if you answered the OP's question about whether a Vitamin D deficiency, which we get from UV light i.e. sunlight, would have an effect on the absorption of calcium. I know from your incredibly informative thread on the relationship between Mg & Ca(link #1 below) that without Mg Ca can not be assimilated & therefore becomes depleted, do you think that Vintamin D would also affect this assimilation process as it is important in humans & fish & to what extent? :confused: I'm just wondering if the photo period or Kelvin rating has an effect on the calcium levels in shrimp as well? I'm sure everyone has read BB's thread on different Kelvin ratings on his lights & how they effected the colour & intensity in his test group(link #2 below). Hmmmm, more head scratcher's! :encouragement:

http://www.shrimpkeepersforum.com/forum/showthread.php/4404-Why-the-need-for-Calcium-amp-Magnesium

http://www.shrimpkeepersforum.com/forum/showthread.php/3963-Colour-amp-Intensity?highlight=kelvin

Just re-read the original post.

Not sure if shrimp can obtain vitamin D from light, like humans do. :confused:

Continue scratching heads LOL!!

- There might be something in it. Light affecting vitamin D and thus absorption of calcium that is.

Ever notice shrimp fading, almost to transparency at night when the lights are off?

Hmmmm, definitely gets you thinking doesn't it!

When I was talking to Alvin, he didn't seem to think that food nor light influenced the colouration of shrimp much.

He said genetics played a bigger role.

In fact, he keeps his shrimp in what I considered relatively low light levels. And he had some PRL CRS and PRL CBS, that just popped in colour. Mind you, his shrimp room was on the top level of his house, surrounded by glass, with an abundance of natural sunlight streaming in at his equatorial location.

Of course proper nutrition and clean environment is important. But it won't alter the shrimps colouration beyond what is capable of at birth.

You can maximise your shrimps colouration with food, lighting, and clean environment, but it will never improve beyond that if it does not have good genes.

More head scratching. That emoticon should be made available for standard selection, we'll need to use it a lot.

I have to say that I completely agree that nutrition & good WP are paramount to shrimp health & their health is the biggest factor in colour intensity & their genetics, obviously, also has a massive impact in their colouration(i.e. one shrimp with average colour can look a lot better if it's 100% healthy & happy than another shrimp with amazing genetics but is constantly stressed by incorrect WP & bad diet) but I have noticed in my different tanks that lighting also plays a role too. I have had the same shrimp in the same water but different light & their colour & intensity was completely different in the tanks with brighter light & higher Kelvin rating, now these were the exact same shrimp in the exact same water but the only difference was light & they appeared to have much better colour in the brighter tank when viewed in the same light(so I could eliminate the optical illusion of the brighter light making them appear brighter) again more scratching, lol

Im glad to see my question has sparked some interest.... I think its fair to say it was left as a head scratcher...

Im thinking controlled environment with nothing different other than food with a high dose of vitamin D supplement.

Been researching Vitamin D "The Clutch for Calcium intake" Natural Sources to possibly make a dehydrated food at home with spinach/Oatmeal/Herring - the later two being a ultra source of Vitamin D.

Curious to hear your opinions on this before i give this a shot...

I think I might be onto something here

http://www.vitamindwiki.com/Invertebrates+use+Vitamin+D3+as+well+%E2%80%93+April+2013

This lab Department of Food Science, National Taiwan Ocean University, Keelung, Taiwan 202, Republic of China did case studys on the glass shrimp - thats enough for me - I want to give it a crack

Can a tech head read this article to see if they can extract any useful data re correct dosing.

Read it.

"in Experiment 2 indicated that the adequate dietary cholecalciferol concentration for growing P. monodon is approximately 0.1 mg/kg."

0.1mg/kg is very, very little amounts. So the foods you are feeding should be sufficient.

That's like 0.0001 per gram of food.

Continue feeding your shrimps foods with known vitamin D in it - Mosura Excel is one that specifically mentions vitamin D.

But note: this is departing from the question of obtaining vitamin D from sunlight/tank lights.

Feeding shrimp vitamin D or any other vitamins/mineral for that matter, has not been a new thing.

Now there you go oatmeal is a super food for nearly all living things. Going to put some in my tanks right now and see if anyone will eat it.

Huh I put some in my tanks, it sinks quickly and the shrimp are eating it even with other food in the tank they are heading to it. More food for free for my shrimp

Brilliant thread mate!! Great question, I cant wait to see some results!

Wasn't there another thread about photo periods and breeding which indicated that a certain period was beneficial?