相信进来看此贴的朋友都在为龙鱼掉眼所困扰，很多人认为龙鱼掉眼有环境因素，有灯光因素，有龙鱼心情因素使之龙鱼掉眼让鱼友们防不慎防，但是相反有些朋友也认识到一个问题，在同一缸中，同一环境下，同一灯光下，同一喂养下，为什么混养的龙鱼中有的掉一个眼睛，有的2个眼睛全掉眼，有的却2只眼睛都很健康呢？这样的例子不就证明了那些所谓的灯光，环境等等因素的无中生有、不攻自破吗？
从养鱼到现在，我换了7条龙鱼了，其中6条都在同一缸中饲养，（不是混养的，是升级，都是单养）第一条号半，养了1年没掉眼，灯光，环境，喂食都一个模式，那时候看见很多人谈掉眼，我感觉跟我没什么关系，第二条宝石，放入缸就喜欢侧游，结果一个眼睛半年后掉眼，我当时认为是龙鱼的习性，第三条是高背，当然还是在原来的缸里养，养3个月没掉眼，升级仟湖B过，养了7个月，轻微掉眼左眼！以后养的基本用我自己研究的方法养没出现掉眼了。。。。
下面我就把我的经验给大家分享下，首先我认为龙鱼有主眼和副眼之分，就好比人类有左撇子一样，有的左眼是主眼，有的右眼是主眼，那么在同一环境中饲养，就会出现不同的效果，可能某条龙鱼就会掉一个眼睛，有的不会掉眼，那么分析这么多就想告诉大家一点，龙鱼掉眼跟环境的因素，水流的关系，灯光的因素似乎有着一系列的关系，但是大家不难发现，这种关系不能按照一定的模式去套用，因为龙鱼的自身主副眼的缘故，所以特定模式治疗和预防掉眼一直得不到很好的效果，给大家带来了掉眼烦恼甚至给追求完美主义饲养者失去了养龙鱼的信心。
分析了这么多下面应该来说说掉眼的成因了吧，大家都知道有种手术可以治疗掉眼，就是去除眼球多余的脂肪对吗？由此可知，龙鱼掉眼是由于眼球脂肪堆积造成，那么我就来教大家个好办法，目前经过很多朋友的试验效果非常的办法，也是我反复研究总结花钱饲养得出的经验，现在拿出来分享还请大家务必善待我的科技成果！
1、大家把新买回来的龙鱼四面封缸，上部顶灯开，（水中灯不需要）不要太亮太刺眼，自己肉眼感觉下不刺眼为佳，灯光按照龙鱼品种决定，这不需要我多说了。
2、饲养初期给吃3分饱，使之养成在水面巡食的习惯，最好能亲密到主人手能摸到龙鱼为佳，此时说明龙鱼已经习惯于往上看寻找食物。
3、饲养中期大量喂食，给于脂肪类食物，让其眼球周围脂肪迅速增长，暴饮暴食，这个时候继续封缸，龙鱼还是保持水面寻食。
4、经过3个月左右的驯化，那么你把封缸的布拿下，你会发现龙鱼眼球下方的脂肪达到一定的厚度了，好像给龙鱼的眼睛做了个脂肪的框架，龙鱼已经不习惯往下看了，因为有脂肪阻碍着，当然难得往下看眼球也很容易还原，总结一句话就是：“龙鱼上眼皮长脂肪就是掉眼，如果把下眼皮长脂肪，那就能阻止掉眼了”。
如果想防掉眼效果更好，封缸时间可以延长至半年。
希望我的实践经验能给大家对于治疗龙鱼掉眼有很大的启示。就目前来看我，许多鱼商用这个方式治疗掉眼效果显著，其实都是我用他们的鱼在试验，（个人没这么多的龙鱼来试验，只能选择免费给商家治疗的办法来实验），现在实验结果非常之好，所以今天特发帖与大家分享，希望各位珍惜我的劳动成果，积极回帖，这将是我为大家服务的动力和源泉，谢谢！
Monday, March 22, 2010
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Tips to control Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate:
Tips to control Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate:
1. The bacteria colonise on the filter media (sponge) so don’t replace them if it is not required. This will destroy their colony and you may see a sudden increase in nitrite/ nitrate.
2. Never wash the filter media in tap water which will kill the useful bacteria. Use the tank water in a mug/pot and wash your filter media with the old aquarium water.
3. Don’t try to change PH of water (if it's not absolutely necessary) because it can be fatal for useful bacteria.
4. In a planted aquarium, the aquatic plants consume ammonia & nitrates and hence contribute to the nitrogen cycle.
5. If you find ammonia/nitrite/nitrate content high, check the following
-- Monitor when you feed your fish, any uneaten food will generate more aquarium waste and degrade your water quality.
-- Increase air circulation by volume (by adding more air-stones or increasing the running time for your air pump). Additional oxygen will help your fish to breath and speed up the oxidation process.
-- For planted aquarium leave the light on for 12 hours, Plants will consume the nitrate.
-- Do a partial water change up to 25%
1. The bacteria colonise on the filter media (sponge) so don’t replace them if it is not required. This will destroy their colony and you may see a sudden increase in nitrite/ nitrate.
2. Never wash the filter media in tap water which will kill the useful bacteria. Use the tank water in a mug/pot and wash your filter media with the old aquarium water.
3. Don’t try to change PH of water (if it's not absolutely necessary) because it can be fatal for useful bacteria.
4. In a planted aquarium, the aquatic plants consume ammonia & nitrates and hence contribute to the nitrogen cycle.
5. If you find ammonia/nitrite/nitrate content high, check the following
-- Monitor when you feed your fish, any uneaten food will generate more aquarium waste and degrade your water quality.
-- Increase air circulation by volume (by adding more air-stones or increasing the running time for your air pump). Additional oxygen will help your fish to breath and speed up the oxidation process.
-- For planted aquarium leave the light on for 12 hours, Plants will consume the nitrate.
-- Do a partial water change up to 25%
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Water changes
Water changes
By Terry Ranson
"My fish were doing fine - until they all died."
I wish I had a nickel every time he heard that line. Most people think their fish are healthy as long as they are able to swim. That's like believing a person is healthy as long as he is breathing. Like people, fish can live for quite a while under less than perfect conditions. Often, fish won't even show signs of distress until the day their keeper finds them belly up in the aquarium.
Fish die for many of the same reasons we do; strokes, failure of internal organs, viral and bacterial (systemic) infections, and infections from wounds. In my opinion, fish losses are almost always caused by stress. I keep stress to a minimum by following some simple rules of aquarium hygiene, the most important being periodic water changes.
In addition to siphoning visible waste from the bottom of the tank, this also helps get rid of harmful substances which cannot be seen with the naked eye. In nature, fish are provided water changes every time it rains, or whenever fresh water flows downstream to where fish live. This is called an open system. But fish in small bodies of water such as aquariums (and to a lesser
extent, ornamental ponds) are in what is called a closed system. Closed systems have no natural way to bring in fresh water, so it must be done artificially, i.e., through water changes.
There's no way around doing water changes. No matter how good your filtration, no matter what chemicals or medication you use, no matter what anyone tells you, if you want to keep fish healthy, you must change their water. And I don't mean just adding water when it gets low from evaporation. When water evaporates, it's just the water which leaves. Fishes' bodily wastes, heavy metals and other substances stay in the water in a concentrated, more harmful form. Without water changes, fish wastes and other organic compounds will drop the pH down until it becomes so acidic it becomes stressful.
If you do enough water changes, pH test kits are virtually unneeded. That's why I almost never test for pH. Many times I've had people say things like, "My Cousin Judy never did
water changes, and her goldfish lived for three years - until they all died one day." For the record, a goldfish can live for more than 30 years. Three years is nothing to brag about. And while Cousin Judy's fish may have lasted for three years, she never really got to enjoy the true beauty of her fish.
Fish which thrive exhibit beautiful colors and interesting behavior. Fish which are simply surviving never look their best, and seldom, if ever exhibit breeding behavior. When you do regular water changes, fish breed readily. That's a sure sign aquarium fish are healthy and thriving - not simply surviving.
By Terry Ranson
"My fish were doing fine - until they all died."
I wish I had a nickel every time he heard that line. Most people think their fish are healthy as long as they are able to swim. That's like believing a person is healthy as long as he is breathing. Like people, fish can live for quite a while under less than perfect conditions. Often, fish won't even show signs of distress until the day their keeper finds them belly up in the aquarium.
Fish die for many of the same reasons we do; strokes, failure of internal organs, viral and bacterial (systemic) infections, and infections from wounds. In my opinion, fish losses are almost always caused by stress. I keep stress to a minimum by following some simple rules of aquarium hygiene, the most important being periodic water changes.
In addition to siphoning visible waste from the bottom of the tank, this also helps get rid of harmful substances which cannot be seen with the naked eye. In nature, fish are provided water changes every time it rains, or whenever fresh water flows downstream to where fish live. This is called an open system. But fish in small bodies of water such as aquariums (and to a lesser
extent, ornamental ponds) are in what is called a closed system. Closed systems have no natural way to bring in fresh water, so it must be done artificially, i.e., through water changes.
There's no way around doing water changes. No matter how good your filtration, no matter what chemicals or medication you use, no matter what anyone tells you, if you want to keep fish healthy, you must change their water. And I don't mean just adding water when it gets low from evaporation. When water evaporates, it's just the water which leaves. Fishes' bodily wastes, heavy metals and other substances stay in the water in a concentrated, more harmful form. Without water changes, fish wastes and other organic compounds will drop the pH down until it becomes so acidic it becomes stressful.
If you do enough water changes, pH test kits are virtually unneeded. That's why I almost never test for pH. Many times I've had people say things like, "My Cousin Judy never did
water changes, and her goldfish lived for three years - until they all died one day." For the record, a goldfish can live for more than 30 years. Three years is nothing to brag about. And while Cousin Judy's fish may have lasted for three years, she never really got to enjoy the true beauty of her fish.
Fish which thrive exhibit beautiful colors and interesting behavior. Fish which are simply surviving never look their best, and seldom, if ever exhibit breeding behavior. When you do regular water changes, fish breed readily. That's a sure sign aquarium fish are healthy and thriving - not simply surviving.
Part 5: Dissolved Oxygen
The Stuff That Water’s Made Of
Part 5: Dissolved Oxygen
by Lenny Llambi
First published in Fincinnati, the official newsletter of the Greater Cincinnati Aquarium Society
Aquarticles.com
Up until this final article, we have covered a variety of topics within the realm of water chemistry. Topics like the nitrogen cycle are very common within aquarium literature; whereas other topics, like conductivity, are rarely discussed in any detail. I think its safe to say that this month’s topic is one of the least discussed water parameters: Dissolved Oxygen (DO). Its actually no surprise that DO is not a popular topic of discussion in aquarium literature. Life-sustaining levels of oxygen are easily maintained in the aquarium without much extra effort or thought. However, it seems like every time I have a catastrophic, mass extinction in an aquarium it is due to overlooking the aquarium’s oxygen requirements.
Oxygen is important to so many living creatures; including: plants, bacteria, algae, fish, and invertebrates. It is used to break down sugars all the way down to carbon dioxide and water, thus releasing the most amount of energy possible from the sugar molecule. When an organism suffocates; the lack of oxygen literally brings every single bodily process that requires energy to a grinding halt. We terrestrial creatures are blessed with an atmosphere that consists of about 20% oxygen. Your tank is a text book model of a well-oxygenated aquarium, if the water column can hold on to half that much. In order to attain “text-book” status, you will need to maximize the amount of oxygen being dissolved into water; while minimizing the amount of oxygen being stripped out of the water column.
Preparing the Water
You may want to refer back to the first article in this series, because I explain how gases interact with water, a little more in depth. It is important to remember that water cannot dissolve an infinite amount of chemicals. Therefore, the more chemicals that a particular body of water dissolves, the “less space” it has to dissolve any extra chemicals. Since saltwater dissolves so many more salts and minerals than freshwater, DO levels in marine environments are about half that of freshwater. Temperature also affects water’s ability to dissolve gaseous chemicals. Colder water dissolves gases more readily than warmer water. This is evident in small farm ponds where the stock-fish can be found gasping for air on the hottest summer day. In addition to all of the toxic chemicals that industrial facilities can pollute waterways with, many industrial facilities raise the average temperature of adjacent water ways. This is known as thermal pollution. The rise in temperature decreases the amount of DO in the water, causing mass-suffocation, which in turn raises dissolved, nitrogenous wastes and lowers pH, as the dead fauna decomposes. This is in effect what happens in many aquarium crashes. When DO Is used up faster than it is replenished, animals begin to die by suffocation. The decomposing bodies increase nitrogenous waste concentration and lower pH (see part 4) as the cadavers are decomposed, further stressing and poisoning fish. Essentially every thing that could go wrong goes wrong when DO becomes deficient.
Consuming Oxygen
The most obvious consumers of oxygen in our aquariums are fish. As body mass and activity increase, a fish’s need for oxygen increases as well. Even though a kribensis (Pelvicachromis pulcher) is larger than a rummy-nose tetra (Hemigrammus rhodostomus), the rummy-nose tetra compensates with its constant activity, which requires quite a bit of oxygen to fuel its metabolism. Moreover, higher temperatures not only hinder water’s ability to dissolve oxygen, they also cause fish’s metabolism to rise. When metabolism increases, the body needs to consume more oxygen in order to burn more sugars and create more energy. Temperature spikes are a double-edged sword for this reason. However, this works in reverse as well. The nest time you come home from an auction with one too many fish (they were rare and seldom-seen in the hobby after all), and you have to keep more fish in one tank than you know you should keep together: turn the temperature down. This will lower the metabolism of your fish, thus lowering their need for oxygen, not to mention the cooler water is now able to dissolve more oxygen.
Of course, any invertebrates that you may keep also use oxygen, but it is the oxygen consumption of an unseen inhabitant that makes up the next largest oxygen consumer in an aquarium. These unseen inhabitants are the nitrifying bacteria that are involved in the nitrogen cycle. The entire process of decomposing a piece of food down to nitrogen gas, carbon dioxide, water, etc. uses oxygen every step of the way. If there is a large amount of decaying, organic matter in the aquarium, DO will naturally fall as the increased number of bacteria consume much more DO. This is yet another complication in the thermal pollution scenario. As larger species suffocate, and begin to decompose, the increased bacterial population consumes even more of the precious little oxygen left. The fact that these invisible bacteria can consume all of the DO in your aquarium is disconcerting, but it underlines the importance of watching your aquarium. When fish begin to suffocate, they become lethargic and discolored and gasp for air at the water’s surface. Snails are an excellent indicator of DO, as the snails will collect at the water’s surface when DO decreases. The possible causes of a drop in DO are numerous, so it really is better to just keep a close eye on your fish’s behavior.
Dissolving Oxygen
The first way that oxygen makes its way into water is from the atmosphere. Anywhere that water and air interface, gases move from the substance with a high concentration of gas to the substance with a low concentration of gas. In the case of oxygen, it diffuses from air (higher concentration) to water (lower concentration). There are several ways that we can manipulate this fact so that DO is maximized throughout our aquarium. The most obvious place that oxygen will diffuse into water from air is the water surface. Therefore, you must leave some room between the water surface and your hood so that the water is exposed to air. Obvious as that point may seem, your hood is not the only thing that can get in the way of atmospheric oxygen diffusing into your water. I have recently moved into an old carriage house that I am slowly renovating. Needless to say, there is an endless supply of dust. One day, a hang-on filter broke on one of my aquariums (of course in the middle of some major sanding), which caused a thick layer of dust to collect on the top of the water. I did not notice anything until I walked by the aquarium and found all of the fish nearly dead, gasping at the top of the tank. I quickly found that the filter had ceased working, and within minutes of replacing it with an operational filter, the dust layer broke and all of the fish were happily swimming about as if nothing ever happened.
Just realize that its not so much the movement of water that prevents the dust layer, it is the “breaking of the water surface”. This is called water agitation, and also helps to increase the amount of DO in the water. Some of the most highly oxygenated bodies of water are fast flowing streams, with lots of white water. As a matter of fact that “white water” is just water with lots of teeny-tiny air bubbles produced by the fast flowing waters churning over rocks and down steep drops in elevation. The most obvious ways to reproduce this is to either use an air pump blowing through a diffuser, or to use venturi injection, which is now an option with almost all major brands of powerhead. Saltwater enthusiasts, gain increased DO as a side benefit of using a protein skimmer. The skimmer is primarily used to remove harmful toxins in the saltwater aquarium, but the large amount of micro, air bubbles used to accomplish this goal, also increases DO. If you don’t like the look of air bubbles in your aquarium, even a hang-on type power filter, where water cascades down into the tank, breaks the water surface, and produces air bubbles below the surface will increase DO.
There is one final point to take into account. If you were to take a 5 gallon bucket filled with only water and measure the dissolved oxygen throughout the water column, you would find that the water near the surface of the water has much more DO than the water at the bottom of the bucket. In deep, placid lakes where there is not a lot of water movement, the lower portion of the lake often times has insufficient oxygen to sustain significant populations of fish. So this means that we need to make sure that the water column in our aquaria is thoroughly mixed, or ‘turned-over’.
The second way to get oxygen into your water is through the use of live plants. Plants produce oxygen as one of the final by-products of photosynthesis. The famous aquascape aquarist , Takashi Amano, actually recommends that anytime you add fish to an aquarium, you should also add some sort of plant life to not only add DO, but also to help with filtration. Now don’t go thinking I’m telling you to go out and buy expensive light fixtures for all of your tanks. There are a myriad of plant species which will grow under a good ole fashioned strip light. Java fern, Java moss, all Anubias sp., most Cryptocoryne sp., hornwort, and Najas Grass are all good plants that can be used under a normal output light. Actually, well-known fish importer, Tony Orso, grows all of his Anubias sp. using the lights on his ceiling (yes you read that right). Moreover, with the exception of Cryptocoryne sp. you can grow all of these plants without a substrate. I’d say most people stay away from live plants, because of the extra effort, but as long as you stay on top of your water changes, the choices that I provided above will help maintain and even increase DO in your aquarium.
I hope that all of these painfully technical articles have broadened your understanding of water chemistry in the aquarium. A lot of people think of water chemistry as a laundry list of numbers that your water test kits needs to conform to whenever you test your aquarium. These people probably think that I test my aquariums weekly with the finest water tests. With the exception of salinity in my saltwater tank, I can’t remember the last time I opened my “el-cheapo” brand water test kit. I rely on the greatest test kit of all, my eyes. You see, I know what my fish and invertebrates are supposed to act like and what my plants and corals are supposed to look like, because I observe my tanks every single day, even if it is just a minute. Whenever any of my aquarium’s inhabitants appear abnormal, I know something is wrong. From this point, I think back and try to identify any maintenance that I may have neglected to perform. Usually I realize that I have not changed the water in a while. Next, I try to identify if I have performed any maintenance differently. Sometimes I realize that I dosed a different amount of a chemical, or that I did not adjust the pH and conductivity in an acidic, soft-water tank. If I still cannot identify the problem, then, and only then, do I blow the dust off of ole reliable, my water test kit and test every water parameter. Perhaps this is all overkill for the average aquarist that maintains a couple of show tanks, but for those of us that could justify charging admission to our basements, understanding a basic level of water chemistry makes caring for all of our many fish less problematic. In the meantime, let’s keep learning about and caring for our fish.
Part 5: Dissolved Oxygen
by Lenny Llambi
First published in Fincinnati, the official newsletter of the Greater Cincinnati Aquarium Society
Aquarticles.com
Up until this final article, we have covered a variety of topics within the realm of water chemistry. Topics like the nitrogen cycle are very common within aquarium literature; whereas other topics, like conductivity, are rarely discussed in any detail. I think its safe to say that this month’s topic is one of the least discussed water parameters: Dissolved Oxygen (DO). Its actually no surprise that DO is not a popular topic of discussion in aquarium literature. Life-sustaining levels of oxygen are easily maintained in the aquarium without much extra effort or thought. However, it seems like every time I have a catastrophic, mass extinction in an aquarium it is due to overlooking the aquarium’s oxygen requirements.
Oxygen is important to so many living creatures; including: plants, bacteria, algae, fish, and invertebrates. It is used to break down sugars all the way down to carbon dioxide and water, thus releasing the most amount of energy possible from the sugar molecule. When an organism suffocates; the lack of oxygen literally brings every single bodily process that requires energy to a grinding halt. We terrestrial creatures are blessed with an atmosphere that consists of about 20% oxygen. Your tank is a text book model of a well-oxygenated aquarium, if the water column can hold on to half that much. In order to attain “text-book” status, you will need to maximize the amount of oxygen being dissolved into water; while minimizing the amount of oxygen being stripped out of the water column.
Preparing the Water
You may want to refer back to the first article in this series, because I explain how gases interact with water, a little more in depth. It is important to remember that water cannot dissolve an infinite amount of chemicals. Therefore, the more chemicals that a particular body of water dissolves, the “less space” it has to dissolve any extra chemicals. Since saltwater dissolves so many more salts and minerals than freshwater, DO levels in marine environments are about half that of freshwater. Temperature also affects water’s ability to dissolve gaseous chemicals. Colder water dissolves gases more readily than warmer water. This is evident in small farm ponds where the stock-fish can be found gasping for air on the hottest summer day. In addition to all of the toxic chemicals that industrial facilities can pollute waterways with, many industrial facilities raise the average temperature of adjacent water ways. This is known as thermal pollution. The rise in temperature decreases the amount of DO in the water, causing mass-suffocation, which in turn raises dissolved, nitrogenous wastes and lowers pH, as the dead fauna decomposes. This is in effect what happens in many aquarium crashes. When DO Is used up faster than it is replenished, animals begin to die by suffocation. The decomposing bodies increase nitrogenous waste concentration and lower pH (see part 4) as the cadavers are decomposed, further stressing and poisoning fish. Essentially every thing that could go wrong goes wrong when DO becomes deficient.
Consuming Oxygen
The most obvious consumers of oxygen in our aquariums are fish. As body mass and activity increase, a fish’s need for oxygen increases as well. Even though a kribensis (Pelvicachromis pulcher) is larger than a rummy-nose tetra (Hemigrammus rhodostomus), the rummy-nose tetra compensates with its constant activity, which requires quite a bit of oxygen to fuel its metabolism. Moreover, higher temperatures not only hinder water’s ability to dissolve oxygen, they also cause fish’s metabolism to rise. When metabolism increases, the body needs to consume more oxygen in order to burn more sugars and create more energy. Temperature spikes are a double-edged sword for this reason. However, this works in reverse as well. The nest time you come home from an auction with one too many fish (they were rare and seldom-seen in the hobby after all), and you have to keep more fish in one tank than you know you should keep together: turn the temperature down. This will lower the metabolism of your fish, thus lowering their need for oxygen, not to mention the cooler water is now able to dissolve more oxygen.
Of course, any invertebrates that you may keep also use oxygen, but it is the oxygen consumption of an unseen inhabitant that makes up the next largest oxygen consumer in an aquarium. These unseen inhabitants are the nitrifying bacteria that are involved in the nitrogen cycle. The entire process of decomposing a piece of food down to nitrogen gas, carbon dioxide, water, etc. uses oxygen every step of the way. If there is a large amount of decaying, organic matter in the aquarium, DO will naturally fall as the increased number of bacteria consume much more DO. This is yet another complication in the thermal pollution scenario. As larger species suffocate, and begin to decompose, the increased bacterial population consumes even more of the precious little oxygen left. The fact that these invisible bacteria can consume all of the DO in your aquarium is disconcerting, but it underlines the importance of watching your aquarium. When fish begin to suffocate, they become lethargic and discolored and gasp for air at the water’s surface. Snails are an excellent indicator of DO, as the snails will collect at the water’s surface when DO decreases. The possible causes of a drop in DO are numerous, so it really is better to just keep a close eye on your fish’s behavior.
Dissolving Oxygen
The first way that oxygen makes its way into water is from the atmosphere. Anywhere that water and air interface, gases move from the substance with a high concentration of gas to the substance with a low concentration of gas. In the case of oxygen, it diffuses from air (higher concentration) to water (lower concentration). There are several ways that we can manipulate this fact so that DO is maximized throughout our aquarium. The most obvious place that oxygen will diffuse into water from air is the water surface. Therefore, you must leave some room between the water surface and your hood so that the water is exposed to air. Obvious as that point may seem, your hood is not the only thing that can get in the way of atmospheric oxygen diffusing into your water. I have recently moved into an old carriage house that I am slowly renovating. Needless to say, there is an endless supply of dust. One day, a hang-on filter broke on one of my aquariums (of course in the middle of some major sanding), which caused a thick layer of dust to collect on the top of the water. I did not notice anything until I walked by the aquarium and found all of the fish nearly dead, gasping at the top of the tank. I quickly found that the filter had ceased working, and within minutes of replacing it with an operational filter, the dust layer broke and all of the fish were happily swimming about as if nothing ever happened.
Just realize that its not so much the movement of water that prevents the dust layer, it is the “breaking of the water surface”. This is called water agitation, and also helps to increase the amount of DO in the water. Some of the most highly oxygenated bodies of water are fast flowing streams, with lots of white water. As a matter of fact that “white water” is just water with lots of teeny-tiny air bubbles produced by the fast flowing waters churning over rocks and down steep drops in elevation. The most obvious ways to reproduce this is to either use an air pump blowing through a diffuser, or to use venturi injection, which is now an option with almost all major brands of powerhead. Saltwater enthusiasts, gain increased DO as a side benefit of using a protein skimmer. The skimmer is primarily used to remove harmful toxins in the saltwater aquarium, but the large amount of micro, air bubbles used to accomplish this goal, also increases DO. If you don’t like the look of air bubbles in your aquarium, even a hang-on type power filter, where water cascades down into the tank, breaks the water surface, and produces air bubbles below the surface will increase DO.
There is one final point to take into account. If you were to take a 5 gallon bucket filled with only water and measure the dissolved oxygen throughout the water column, you would find that the water near the surface of the water has much more DO than the water at the bottom of the bucket. In deep, placid lakes where there is not a lot of water movement, the lower portion of the lake often times has insufficient oxygen to sustain significant populations of fish. So this means that we need to make sure that the water column in our aquaria is thoroughly mixed, or ‘turned-over’.
The second way to get oxygen into your water is through the use of live plants. Plants produce oxygen as one of the final by-products of photosynthesis. The famous aquascape aquarist , Takashi Amano, actually recommends that anytime you add fish to an aquarium, you should also add some sort of plant life to not only add DO, but also to help with filtration. Now don’t go thinking I’m telling you to go out and buy expensive light fixtures for all of your tanks. There are a myriad of plant species which will grow under a good ole fashioned strip light. Java fern, Java moss, all Anubias sp., most Cryptocoryne sp., hornwort, and Najas Grass are all good plants that can be used under a normal output light. Actually, well-known fish importer, Tony Orso, grows all of his Anubias sp. using the lights on his ceiling (yes you read that right). Moreover, with the exception of Cryptocoryne sp. you can grow all of these plants without a substrate. I’d say most people stay away from live plants, because of the extra effort, but as long as you stay on top of your water changes, the choices that I provided above will help maintain and even increase DO in your aquarium.
I hope that all of these painfully technical articles have broadened your understanding of water chemistry in the aquarium. A lot of people think of water chemistry as a laundry list of numbers that your water test kits needs to conform to whenever you test your aquarium. These people probably think that I test my aquariums weekly with the finest water tests. With the exception of salinity in my saltwater tank, I can’t remember the last time I opened my “el-cheapo” brand water test kit. I rely on the greatest test kit of all, my eyes. You see, I know what my fish and invertebrates are supposed to act like and what my plants and corals are supposed to look like, because I observe my tanks every single day, even if it is just a minute. Whenever any of my aquarium’s inhabitants appear abnormal, I know something is wrong. From this point, I think back and try to identify any maintenance that I may have neglected to perform. Usually I realize that I have not changed the water in a while. Next, I try to identify if I have performed any maintenance differently. Sometimes I realize that I dosed a different amount of a chemical, or that I did not adjust the pH and conductivity in an acidic, soft-water tank. If I still cannot identify the problem, then, and only then, do I blow the dust off of ole reliable, my water test kit and test every water parameter. Perhaps this is all overkill for the average aquarist that maintains a couple of show tanks, but for those of us that could justify charging admission to our basements, understanding a basic level of water chemistry makes caring for all of our many fish less problematic. In the meantime, let’s keep learning about and caring for our fish.
Part 4: The Nitrogen Cycle
The Stuff That Water’s Made Of
Part 4: The Nitrogen Cycle
by Lenny Llambi
First published in Fincinnati, the official newsletter of the Greater Cincinnati Aquarium Society
Aquarticles.com
So far you could say that this series of articles has been leaning toward the "chemistry side of things." We’ve discussed water’s ability to dissolve a variety of different chemicals and the pressure that these chemicals produce called osmotic pressure. Conductivity measures the total amount of dissolved chemicals, while general hardness specifically measures anions such as calcium and magnesium. Finally, last edition; we covered how pH measures the amount of acids vs. bases that are dissolved in water, and how alkalinity maintains a high pH. This edition we’ll discuss the nitrogen cycle, which is the biological process of reducing ammonia to nitrate. Bacteria that use nitrogenous molecules to receive their energy drive this cycle.
Where Proteins Go When They’re Used
Many explanations of the nitrogen cycle begin with ammonia and end with nitrate, but the whole process actually begins before ammonia, and ends after nitrate. The nitrogen cycle begins when our fish ingest and begin to breakdown the proteins found in their diet, called: mineralization. Proteins are long chains of individual molecules called amino acids. These amino acids are very similar to the simple sugars that make up carbs; however, amino acids contain nitrogen in addition to hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon. This nitrogen allows amino acids to bond to each other (called the peptide bond), thus forming proteins. There is a real complicated explanation behind the physics of this bond, but for our purposes, let’s just keep in mind that the peptide bond offers extra rigidity to the protein molecule. This is why proteins are used to build muscles, enzymes, fingernails, etc. These are all parts, which need to retain a solid frame or shape. Once proteins are separated into amino acids, each amino acid is split into an ammonium (NH4+) molecule and an organic acid molecule. This brings up an important point about fish waste. Due to the organic acid and ammonium byproducts of protein metabolization, fish waste is very acidic by nature, and will cause pH to drop. This is very problematic when keeping African cichlids or marine species, which enjoy a very high pH. As I mentioned in the previous installment, alkalinity neutralizes acids such as those found in fish waste so that pH is not affected.
Fish are not the only creatures that are contributing to the nitrogen cycle. Aside from any invertebrates you may have in your aquarium, you probably also have a plethora of bacteria that are breaking down the proteins that your fish “miss”. Bacteria from the genera Bacillus, Clostridium, and Pseudomonas break down any proteins found in excess food, fish waste, plant mulm, or any other source of organic matter you may have “laying around” your tank. On the marine side of the hobby, more and more hobbyists are using rock, which is impregnated with a variety of different bacteria and invertebrates, generically called “live-rock” as a natural source of filtration. One drawback to the use of this rock is that often times, after moving the rock, many of these creatures die in transit. This provides a huge amount of organic matter that is constantly being broken down, causing massive algal blooms and an extended cycling time (curing). I have had good success speeding up the curing process by using Hagen’s Waste Controlä, which is a concentrated culture of bacteria (mostly Pseudomonas) responsible for mineralization. By using this product, frequent water changes, and a lot of circulation, I have been able to cure live rock in two weeks as opposed to the usual month.
Ammonia or Ammonium?
As we discussed in the third article, pH determines whether ammonia (NH3) or ammonium (NH4+) is present in our tanks. Our fish actually excrete ammonium, which remains ammonium in acidic water. However, if ammonium is excreted into water with a pH above seven, it begins reacting with the bases in the water to become ammonia. Now it’s really a misnomer to label ammonia as toxic and ammonium as non-toxic. Both chemicals are lethally toxic to cells when ingested. What differentiates the two is how readily they are ingested. I mentioned in the first article that osmosis allows for water and other small chemicals to pass through the cell’s membrane. Well it just so happens that ammonia is small enough to be transported across the cell membrane almost as readily as water. On the other hand, ammonium, due to its charge, has to be actively pumped into the cell using pumps and channels in the cell’s membrane. Therefore, fish have a little more control keeping ammonium out of their cells. Now don’t take this the wrong way. Whatever the pH in your tank, you should make sure your ammonia/um is under control at all times.
Dirt-Eating Bacteria
At this point in the nitrogen cycle, we begin the nitrification process. Basically this process takes ammonium and converts it into nitrite, which is then transformed into the final nitrification product: nitrate. All of these reactions are performed by lithotrophic (roughly translating as: dirt-eating) bacteria of the genera Nitrosococcus, Nitrobacter, Nitrospira, Nitrosolobus, amongst others. One characteristic of these bacteria is that, in bacterial terms, they are incredibly slow growing. This is why it is essential that you exercise restraint while stocking a brand new aquarium. Your aquarium inhabitants are constantly excreting ammonium into the water, while the nitrifying bacteria are only reproducing every 8 hours (every 24 hours in saltwater). Moreover, the lithotrophic bacteria that feed on nitrites, producing nitrates, are actually inhibited by the presence of ammonia. So once you establish a population of bacteria that can handle the bioload in your aquarium, you have only begun the process of tackling your aquarium's capability of dealing with nitrites. One time-tested and approved way tracking the cycling process is to test for nitrites regularly until the nitrite concentration spikes and returns to zero. Dosing products such as Hagen’s CycleÔ, which is a concentrated formula of lithotrophic bacteria, will help establish populations of ammonia-reducing and nitrite-reducing bacteria in much shorter order. The second important trait about these lithotrophic bacteria is that they must anchor themselves to some sort of substrate. Make absolute certain that when you clean whatever substrate these bacteria have colonized, use aged aquarium water, as this water is devoid of any harmful chemicals (bacteria that is) present in tap water.
One last note about nitrites and nitrates, concerning their toxicity. These two molecules actually have the same exact effect. When nitrate is ingested it is not toxic, but it can actually be converted to nitrite, which is toxic. Once nitrite makes its way into the bloodstream it can react with a blood cell’s hemoglobin, which is the site where oxygen bonds to blood. Once nitrite turns the blood’s hemoglobin into methoglobin, blood is unable to carry out its most important task: supply oxygen to the body. This makes nitrite probably the most lethal molecule in the nitrogen cycle, because 1) it is not inhibited by pH like ammonia 2) nitrate must first be converted to nitrite before it becomes toxic. So, again, make sure you measure a nitrite spike and drop-off before you consider your aquarium cycled.
Making Nitrogen Gas
Bacteria in the genera Pseudomonas, Bacillus, and Alcaligines drive the final step in the nitrogen cycle. These bacteria convert nitrate into nitrogen gas, which then escapes into the atmosphere. However, these bacteria only perform this reaction in certain conditions. When these bacteria grow in an area where oxygen is readily available (aerobic), they utilize the available oxygen to break down sugars. However, when these bacteria find themselves in an area of low or no oxygen (anaerobic or anoxic); they actually utilize nitrates (notice the oxygen molecules in NO3) to break down sugars. Those of us who have ventured into maintaining coral reef aquariums can provide such an anaerobic environment by using a deep sand-bed of at least three inches where the bacteria colonizing the bottom layer are starved of oxygen. You can actually see bubbles of nitrogen gas rising from the bottom layers of sand. Those of us who stay on the fresh side of things can duplicate this phenomenon by not cleaning our sponges (as in sponge filter sponges). What? Not clean our sponge filters? That’s right! Now notice I didn’t say stop cleaning your aquarium altogether. However, in theory, if you allow your sponge filter, ceramic beads, biowheel, etc. to become clogged with bacterial growth, so that the inner layers are starved of oxygen; you will then be able to complete the nitrogen cycle in your very own aquarium. Although the deep sandbed in reef aquariums allows for substantially more nitrification to occur than in a clogged sponge filter, we “reefers” still have to take extra measures, including good ole water changes, to keep nitrates to a minimum, so use this tip as an insurance policy not a magic snake-oil.
Although I think that most every hobbyist is at least somewhat familiar with the nitrogen cycle, I hope that the in-depth discussion presented in this article will give everyone more insights. Well after this installment, there is only one more to go. In the final part of this article, I will go over gases in the aquarium. The GCAS HAP program has been growing by leaps and bounds, so I can’t very well skip over the gas of interest for all HAP participants: carbon dioxide. However, one gas that affects every kind of aquarist, but we rarely hear discussed, is oxygen. Next installment I will discuss oxygen’s importance and why I think more of us should take this important gas much more into account when we plan our aquariums, or when we deal with a problem in our aquariums. In the meantime let’s keep learning about and caring for our fish.
Part 4: The Nitrogen Cycle
by Lenny Llambi
First published in Fincinnati, the official newsletter of the Greater Cincinnati Aquarium Society
Aquarticles.com
So far you could say that this series of articles has been leaning toward the "chemistry side of things." We’ve discussed water’s ability to dissolve a variety of different chemicals and the pressure that these chemicals produce called osmotic pressure. Conductivity measures the total amount of dissolved chemicals, while general hardness specifically measures anions such as calcium and magnesium. Finally, last edition; we covered how pH measures the amount of acids vs. bases that are dissolved in water, and how alkalinity maintains a high pH. This edition we’ll discuss the nitrogen cycle, which is the biological process of reducing ammonia to nitrate. Bacteria that use nitrogenous molecules to receive their energy drive this cycle.
Where Proteins Go When They’re Used
Many explanations of the nitrogen cycle begin with ammonia and end with nitrate, but the whole process actually begins before ammonia, and ends after nitrate. The nitrogen cycle begins when our fish ingest and begin to breakdown the proteins found in their diet, called: mineralization. Proteins are long chains of individual molecules called amino acids. These amino acids are very similar to the simple sugars that make up carbs; however, amino acids contain nitrogen in addition to hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon. This nitrogen allows amino acids to bond to each other (called the peptide bond), thus forming proteins. There is a real complicated explanation behind the physics of this bond, but for our purposes, let’s just keep in mind that the peptide bond offers extra rigidity to the protein molecule. This is why proteins are used to build muscles, enzymes, fingernails, etc. These are all parts, which need to retain a solid frame or shape. Once proteins are separated into amino acids, each amino acid is split into an ammonium (NH4+) molecule and an organic acid molecule. This brings up an important point about fish waste. Due to the organic acid and ammonium byproducts of protein metabolization, fish waste is very acidic by nature, and will cause pH to drop. This is very problematic when keeping African cichlids or marine species, which enjoy a very high pH. As I mentioned in the previous installment, alkalinity neutralizes acids such as those found in fish waste so that pH is not affected.
Fish are not the only creatures that are contributing to the nitrogen cycle. Aside from any invertebrates you may have in your aquarium, you probably also have a plethora of bacteria that are breaking down the proteins that your fish “miss”. Bacteria from the genera Bacillus, Clostridium, and Pseudomonas break down any proteins found in excess food, fish waste, plant mulm, or any other source of organic matter you may have “laying around” your tank. On the marine side of the hobby, more and more hobbyists are using rock, which is impregnated with a variety of different bacteria and invertebrates, generically called “live-rock” as a natural source of filtration. One drawback to the use of this rock is that often times, after moving the rock, many of these creatures die in transit. This provides a huge amount of organic matter that is constantly being broken down, causing massive algal blooms and an extended cycling time (curing). I have had good success speeding up the curing process by using Hagen’s Waste Controlä, which is a concentrated culture of bacteria (mostly Pseudomonas) responsible for mineralization. By using this product, frequent water changes, and a lot of circulation, I have been able to cure live rock in two weeks as opposed to the usual month.
Ammonia or Ammonium?
As we discussed in the third article, pH determines whether ammonia (NH3) or ammonium (NH4+) is present in our tanks. Our fish actually excrete ammonium, which remains ammonium in acidic water. However, if ammonium is excreted into water with a pH above seven, it begins reacting with the bases in the water to become ammonia. Now it’s really a misnomer to label ammonia as toxic and ammonium as non-toxic. Both chemicals are lethally toxic to cells when ingested. What differentiates the two is how readily they are ingested. I mentioned in the first article that osmosis allows for water and other small chemicals to pass through the cell’s membrane. Well it just so happens that ammonia is small enough to be transported across the cell membrane almost as readily as water. On the other hand, ammonium, due to its charge, has to be actively pumped into the cell using pumps and channels in the cell’s membrane. Therefore, fish have a little more control keeping ammonium out of their cells. Now don’t take this the wrong way. Whatever the pH in your tank, you should make sure your ammonia/um is under control at all times.
Dirt-Eating Bacteria
At this point in the nitrogen cycle, we begin the nitrification process. Basically this process takes ammonium and converts it into nitrite, which is then transformed into the final nitrification product: nitrate. All of these reactions are performed by lithotrophic (roughly translating as: dirt-eating) bacteria of the genera Nitrosococcus, Nitrobacter, Nitrospira, Nitrosolobus, amongst others. One characteristic of these bacteria is that, in bacterial terms, they are incredibly slow growing. This is why it is essential that you exercise restraint while stocking a brand new aquarium. Your aquarium inhabitants are constantly excreting ammonium into the water, while the nitrifying bacteria are only reproducing every 8 hours (every 24 hours in saltwater). Moreover, the lithotrophic bacteria that feed on nitrites, producing nitrates, are actually inhibited by the presence of ammonia. So once you establish a population of bacteria that can handle the bioload in your aquarium, you have only begun the process of tackling your aquarium's capability of dealing with nitrites. One time-tested and approved way tracking the cycling process is to test for nitrites regularly until the nitrite concentration spikes and returns to zero. Dosing products such as Hagen’s CycleÔ, which is a concentrated formula of lithotrophic bacteria, will help establish populations of ammonia-reducing and nitrite-reducing bacteria in much shorter order. The second important trait about these lithotrophic bacteria is that they must anchor themselves to some sort of substrate. Make absolute certain that when you clean whatever substrate these bacteria have colonized, use aged aquarium water, as this water is devoid of any harmful chemicals (bacteria that is) present in tap water.
One last note about nitrites and nitrates, concerning their toxicity. These two molecules actually have the same exact effect. When nitrate is ingested it is not toxic, but it can actually be converted to nitrite, which is toxic. Once nitrite makes its way into the bloodstream it can react with a blood cell’s hemoglobin, which is the site where oxygen bonds to blood. Once nitrite turns the blood’s hemoglobin into methoglobin, blood is unable to carry out its most important task: supply oxygen to the body. This makes nitrite probably the most lethal molecule in the nitrogen cycle, because 1) it is not inhibited by pH like ammonia 2) nitrate must first be converted to nitrite before it becomes toxic. So, again, make sure you measure a nitrite spike and drop-off before you consider your aquarium cycled.
Making Nitrogen Gas
Bacteria in the genera Pseudomonas, Bacillus, and Alcaligines drive the final step in the nitrogen cycle. These bacteria convert nitrate into nitrogen gas, which then escapes into the atmosphere. However, these bacteria only perform this reaction in certain conditions. When these bacteria grow in an area where oxygen is readily available (aerobic), they utilize the available oxygen to break down sugars. However, when these bacteria find themselves in an area of low or no oxygen (anaerobic or anoxic); they actually utilize nitrates (notice the oxygen molecules in NO3) to break down sugars. Those of us who have ventured into maintaining coral reef aquariums can provide such an anaerobic environment by using a deep sand-bed of at least three inches where the bacteria colonizing the bottom layer are starved of oxygen. You can actually see bubbles of nitrogen gas rising from the bottom layers of sand. Those of us who stay on the fresh side of things can duplicate this phenomenon by not cleaning our sponges (as in sponge filter sponges). What? Not clean our sponge filters? That’s right! Now notice I didn’t say stop cleaning your aquarium altogether. However, in theory, if you allow your sponge filter, ceramic beads, biowheel, etc. to become clogged with bacterial growth, so that the inner layers are starved of oxygen; you will then be able to complete the nitrogen cycle in your very own aquarium. Although the deep sandbed in reef aquariums allows for substantially more nitrification to occur than in a clogged sponge filter, we “reefers” still have to take extra measures, including good ole water changes, to keep nitrates to a minimum, so use this tip as an insurance policy not a magic snake-oil.
Although I think that most every hobbyist is at least somewhat familiar with the nitrogen cycle, I hope that the in-depth discussion presented in this article will give everyone more insights. Well after this installment, there is only one more to go. In the final part of this article, I will go over gases in the aquarium. The GCAS HAP program has been growing by leaps and bounds, so I can’t very well skip over the gas of interest for all HAP participants: carbon dioxide. However, one gas that affects every kind of aquarist, but we rarely hear discussed, is oxygen. Next installment I will discuss oxygen’s importance and why I think more of us should take this important gas much more into account when we plan our aquariums, or when we deal with a problem in our aquariums. In the meantime let’s keep learning about and caring for our fish.
Part 3: pH & Alkalinity
The Stuff That Water’s Made Of
Part 3: pH & Alkalinity
by Lenny Llambi
First published in Fincinnati, the official newsletter of the Greater Cincinnati Aquarium Society
Aquarticles.com
After our previous two perhaps somewhat arcane installments, we can finally begin using some more broadly understood terminology in our discussion of water chemistry. We will explore two water parameters for which we have all owned a test kit: pH and alkalinity. Whether we are keeping African cichlids, a planted aquarium, or a reef aquarium, these two water parameters can spell the difference between a successful aquarium and a disaster-in-a-box (a glass box that is). pH is a measurement of whether your aquarium has excess protons or electrons; and therefore, determines how molecules react with each other and the creatures we keep. Alkalinity is a measurement of how well the water in our aquariums can “buffer” a basic pH, or in other words, how well our water can maintain a basic pH.
pH
Ask any aquarist what you are measuring when you take a pH reading, and I’m sure well over 90% of responses would go something like: “You’re measuring how acidic or basic the water is.” Although that answer would be absolutely true, there is more to pH than meets the eye. The terms acidic and basic essentially refer to the number of excess protons and electrons that are present in water. Protons and electrons (generically called sub-atomic particles) are two important building blocks for all ions and molecules. Protons produce a positive charge, which naturally attracts the negative charge of electrons, and vice versa. Any atom, ion, or molecule is constantly trying to achieve equal amounts of electrons and protons, because when this state is achieved, the chemical is considered stable. Chemical reactions are the mechanism by which chemicals equalize the balance between how many electrons and protons a particular chemical contains. For instance, table salt is made up of one sodium ion, which has one more proton than electrons (hence the overall positive charge), and one chlorine ion, which has one more electron than protons (hence the overall negative charge). When these two ions form a bond, the sodium ion gains an electron, the chlorine ion’s extra electron has an extra proton to counteract, and the entire molecule now has equal amounts of electrons and protons.
Unfortunately, a pH reading is not as straight forward as: your water has x number of protons and y number of electrons. So I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to you, in advance, for the massive chemistry headache I’m about to give you. pH does not measure any and every proton or electron, actually it really doesn’t even measure electrons at all. pH actually measures the number of protons that are present in water in the form of the hydrogen ion (H+). The letters p and h stand for the potential of the hydrogen ion. So when your handy-dandy pH test kit measures the pH between 1 and 6.9999; that particular body of water is considered acidic, and it contains an excess of protons. It also means that your water is just rearing to react with negatively charged ions. So, what does it mean when our same handy-dandy pH test kit tells us that our water has a pH between 7.0001 and 14? Well a reading of 7.0000 (neutral) obviously implies that there is no excess of protons, but does a higher reading mean that there is a negative number of protons. Actually, sort of.
A base is defined as any chemical that can accept a proton. In other words, it is a chemical with a negative charge (i.e. an extra electron) that is able to react with any extra protons. So when our handy-dandy pH test kit gives us a reading above 7.0000; we know that our water has an excess of electrons, in the form of the bases dissolved in water. You can think of a high pH reading as a proton debt. If you have a $2,000 MasterCard bill; you would need to pay the $2,000 before you could start putting money into your savings account. Once you pay your credit card off, you then have an excess of money (until the next fish auction rolls around). Likewise, a basic pH needs a certain amount of acid added to it before the water starts accumulating excess protons.
Acid-Base Interactions
In the introduction, I noted that the pH of water determines how chemicals react with each other and our animals. For instance, if the pH is acidic, meaning there are extra hydrogen ions (i.e. extra protons) in the water, the chemicals in water will tend to react with chemicals with excess electrons more vigorously. The most evident example of this is ammonia toxicity. There are actually two forms of ammonia with which we are concerned: NH3 (ammonia) and NH4+ (ammonium). Ammonium is not very toxic to fish, whereas, ammonia is extremely toxic (I’ll explain this in more depth in the next edition). As you can see, the difference between these two molecules is: Ammonium has an extra proton (H+), which is provided to the ammonium molecule in acidic water. As soon as pH rises above 7.0, the extra proton in ammonium reacts with the extra electrons of the bases in the water, leaving the lethal ammonia molecule. This reaction can be summarized with the equations:
NH4+ + NaOH NH3 + H+ + Na+ + OH- NH3 + H2O + Na+
NH3 + CH3CO2H NH3 + CH3CO2- + H+ NH4+ + CH3CO2-
I cannot stress enough, in each one of these articles, that any creature which we maintain in our aquariums has evolved to deal with water parameters in a certain way. For instance, fish blood has a pH of approximately 7.4. This blood, especially in the gill region, is separated from the water in which our fish live, by one or two cell layers. A dwarf cichlid from a very acidic Amazon tributary, has evolved so that the two cell layers between its blood and the river water are able to “buffer the water pH” before it affects blood pH. If we were to dump this fish into an aquarium with a very high pH, the fish into an aquarium with a very high pH, the fish may not have a mechanism to deal with external pH in the opposite manner. Of course many of our fish either live in waters of mild pH, or waters with mild pH fluctuations. However, with the ever-rising popularity of African, rift-lake species, killifish species, and marine species there are also many fish that live in waters of extreme and consistent pH. These fish are probably the most susceptible to either wildly fluctuating pH, or simply improper pH.
Alkalinity
Alkalinity is a seldom-understood water parameter. It is also known as carbonate hardness (KH), and thus allows for confusion with the term General Hardness. Make no mistake GH and KH are two separate measurements. As we discussed in the second article, GH measures how many cations are in the water. Alkalinity, on the other hand, measures how many anions are in the water. An anion is any ion, which has an overall, negative charge. These anions react with any acids (H+) introduced into the water, thus neutralizing them and maintaining a high pH. This is where the definition of a base as a proton acceptor comes into play. Actually, many people consider alkalinity as the total amount of base present in water. In aquariums the most encountered constituents of alkalinity are: bicarbonate and carbonate. We can then define alkalinity as water’s ability to absorb acids without affecting pH.
Alkalinity has three different sets of units, which are the most frequently encountered in the aquarium trade. In the United States Parts Per Million (ppm) is most prevalent; whereas, in Germany, Degrees of Carbonate Hardness (dKH) is the unit most often used. Finally, a more scientific unit, is: Milliequivalents Per Liter (Meq/L). Even though these three measurements have different origins, I have seen all of them used in aquarium literature, without any sort of rhyme or reason. Here is an easy way of converting these units:
50 ppm (mg/L) = 1 meq/L = 2.8 dKH
I hate to sound like your mother (sorry GCAS moms) but: I cannot stress enough, in each one of these articles, that any creature which we maintain in our aquariums has evolved to deal with water parameters in a certain way. Alkalinity actually helps us respect this inevitable truth in many circumstances. For instance, we are all well aware of the fact that African, rift-lake cichlids come from waters with a pH of around 8.0. Fish waste is acidic by nature, and will therefore slowly lower the pH in an aquarium. However, if there is an abundance of anions in the water, these chemicals, which contribute toward alkalinity, will react with the acids and neutralize them before pH is affected. Instead of constantly testing for pH in a rift-lake aquarium, adding a high-quality buffer will act as an insurance policy against lethal pH drops.
Well you made it! This was probably the most gruesome of all the installments. Don’t worry if you have to read it a few times, because I had to re-write this third part about a dozen times. At any rate, I hope this gives everyone a better understanding of how pH affects the way chemicals function in our aquariums, and how alkalinity can help maintain a certain pH. Next issue we’ll discuss a subject that all aquarists must inevitably become familiar with: the nitrogen cycle. Of course, we’ll go a little more in depth than most explanations go, but I’m sure that you’ll get some new insights on this natural process. In the meantime let’s keep learning about and caring for our fish.
Part 3: pH & Alkalinity
by Lenny Llambi
First published in Fincinnati, the official newsletter of the Greater Cincinnati Aquarium Society
Aquarticles.com
After our previous two perhaps somewhat arcane installments, we can finally begin using some more broadly understood terminology in our discussion of water chemistry. We will explore two water parameters for which we have all owned a test kit: pH and alkalinity. Whether we are keeping African cichlids, a planted aquarium, or a reef aquarium, these two water parameters can spell the difference between a successful aquarium and a disaster-in-a-box (a glass box that is). pH is a measurement of whether your aquarium has excess protons or electrons; and therefore, determines how molecules react with each other and the creatures we keep. Alkalinity is a measurement of how well the water in our aquariums can “buffer” a basic pH, or in other words, how well our water can maintain a basic pH.
pH
Ask any aquarist what you are measuring when you take a pH reading, and I’m sure well over 90% of responses would go something like: “You’re measuring how acidic or basic the water is.” Although that answer would be absolutely true, there is more to pH than meets the eye. The terms acidic and basic essentially refer to the number of excess protons and electrons that are present in water. Protons and electrons (generically called sub-atomic particles) are two important building blocks for all ions and molecules. Protons produce a positive charge, which naturally attracts the negative charge of electrons, and vice versa. Any atom, ion, or molecule is constantly trying to achieve equal amounts of electrons and protons, because when this state is achieved, the chemical is considered stable. Chemical reactions are the mechanism by which chemicals equalize the balance between how many electrons and protons a particular chemical contains. For instance, table salt is made up of one sodium ion, which has one more proton than electrons (hence the overall positive charge), and one chlorine ion, which has one more electron than protons (hence the overall negative charge). When these two ions form a bond, the sodium ion gains an electron, the chlorine ion’s extra electron has an extra proton to counteract, and the entire molecule now has equal amounts of electrons and protons.
Unfortunately, a pH reading is not as straight forward as: your water has x number of protons and y number of electrons. So I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to you, in advance, for the massive chemistry headache I’m about to give you. pH does not measure any and every proton or electron, actually it really doesn’t even measure electrons at all. pH actually measures the number of protons that are present in water in the form of the hydrogen ion (H+). The letters p and h stand for the potential of the hydrogen ion. So when your handy-dandy pH test kit measures the pH between 1 and 6.9999; that particular body of water is considered acidic, and it contains an excess of protons. It also means that your water is just rearing to react with negatively charged ions. So, what does it mean when our same handy-dandy pH test kit tells us that our water has a pH between 7.0001 and 14? Well a reading of 7.0000 (neutral) obviously implies that there is no excess of protons, but does a higher reading mean that there is a negative number of protons. Actually, sort of.
A base is defined as any chemical that can accept a proton. In other words, it is a chemical with a negative charge (i.e. an extra electron) that is able to react with any extra protons. So when our handy-dandy pH test kit gives us a reading above 7.0000; we know that our water has an excess of electrons, in the form of the bases dissolved in water. You can think of a high pH reading as a proton debt. If you have a $2,000 MasterCard bill; you would need to pay the $2,000 before you could start putting money into your savings account. Once you pay your credit card off, you then have an excess of money (until the next fish auction rolls around). Likewise, a basic pH needs a certain amount of acid added to it before the water starts accumulating excess protons.
Acid-Base Interactions
In the introduction, I noted that the pH of water determines how chemicals react with each other and our animals. For instance, if the pH is acidic, meaning there are extra hydrogen ions (i.e. extra protons) in the water, the chemicals in water will tend to react with chemicals with excess electrons more vigorously. The most evident example of this is ammonia toxicity. There are actually two forms of ammonia with which we are concerned: NH3 (ammonia) and NH4+ (ammonium). Ammonium is not very toxic to fish, whereas, ammonia is extremely toxic (I’ll explain this in more depth in the next edition). As you can see, the difference between these two molecules is: Ammonium has an extra proton (H+), which is provided to the ammonium molecule in acidic water. As soon as pH rises above 7.0, the extra proton in ammonium reacts with the extra electrons of the bases in the water, leaving the lethal ammonia molecule. This reaction can be summarized with the equations:
NH4+ + NaOH NH3 + H+ + Na+ + OH- NH3 + H2O + Na+
NH3 + CH3CO2H NH3 + CH3CO2- + H+ NH4+ + CH3CO2-
I cannot stress enough, in each one of these articles, that any creature which we maintain in our aquariums has evolved to deal with water parameters in a certain way. For instance, fish blood has a pH of approximately 7.4. This blood, especially in the gill region, is separated from the water in which our fish live, by one or two cell layers. A dwarf cichlid from a very acidic Amazon tributary, has evolved so that the two cell layers between its blood and the river water are able to “buffer the water pH” before it affects blood pH. If we were to dump this fish into an aquarium with a very high pH, the fish into an aquarium with a very high pH, the fish may not have a mechanism to deal with external pH in the opposite manner. Of course many of our fish either live in waters of mild pH, or waters with mild pH fluctuations. However, with the ever-rising popularity of African, rift-lake species, killifish species, and marine species there are also many fish that live in waters of extreme and consistent pH. These fish are probably the most susceptible to either wildly fluctuating pH, or simply improper pH.
Alkalinity
Alkalinity is a seldom-understood water parameter. It is also known as carbonate hardness (KH), and thus allows for confusion with the term General Hardness. Make no mistake GH and KH are two separate measurements. As we discussed in the second article, GH measures how many cations are in the water. Alkalinity, on the other hand, measures how many anions are in the water. An anion is any ion, which has an overall, negative charge. These anions react with any acids (H+) introduced into the water, thus neutralizing them and maintaining a high pH. This is where the definition of a base as a proton acceptor comes into play. Actually, many people consider alkalinity as the total amount of base present in water. In aquariums the most encountered constituents of alkalinity are: bicarbonate and carbonate. We can then define alkalinity as water’s ability to absorb acids without affecting pH.
Alkalinity has three different sets of units, which are the most frequently encountered in the aquarium trade. In the United States Parts Per Million (ppm) is most prevalent; whereas, in Germany, Degrees of Carbonate Hardness (dKH) is the unit most often used. Finally, a more scientific unit, is: Milliequivalents Per Liter (Meq/L). Even though these three measurements have different origins, I have seen all of them used in aquarium literature, without any sort of rhyme or reason. Here is an easy way of converting these units:
50 ppm (mg/L) = 1 meq/L = 2.8 dKH
I hate to sound like your mother (sorry GCAS moms) but: I cannot stress enough, in each one of these articles, that any creature which we maintain in our aquariums has evolved to deal with water parameters in a certain way. Alkalinity actually helps us respect this inevitable truth in many circumstances. For instance, we are all well aware of the fact that African, rift-lake cichlids come from waters with a pH of around 8.0. Fish waste is acidic by nature, and will therefore slowly lower the pH in an aquarium. However, if there is an abundance of anions in the water, these chemicals, which contribute toward alkalinity, will react with the acids and neutralize them before pH is affected. Instead of constantly testing for pH in a rift-lake aquarium, adding a high-quality buffer will act as an insurance policy against lethal pH drops.
Well you made it! This was probably the most gruesome of all the installments. Don’t worry if you have to read it a few times, because I had to re-write this third part about a dozen times. At any rate, I hope this gives everyone a better understanding of how pH affects the way chemicals function in our aquariums, and how alkalinity can help maintain a certain pH. Next issue we’ll discuss a subject that all aquarists must inevitably become familiar with: the nitrogen cycle. Of course, we’ll go a little more in depth than most explanations go, but I’m sure that you’ll get some new insights on this natural process. In the meantime let’s keep learning about and caring for our fish.
The Molecule, Temperature, Saltwater, and Osmosis
The Stuff That Water’s Made Of
Part 1: The Molecule, Temperature, Saltwater, and Osmosis
by Lenny Llambi
First published in Fincinnati, the official newsletter of the Greater Cincinnati Aquarium Society
Aquarticles.com
One crucial component of the aquarium hobby that helps the hobbyist in his/her venture is knowledge. Aquarium keeping is an interesting hobby in that it combines principles from physics, chemistry, and biology. The more we understand each of the principles within these disciplines, the easier our hobby becomes. Of course, biology is the most understood of the three fields, because lets face it our final goal is to maintain living creatures. However, much like junior year in high school, we need to understand a basic level of chemistry to survive (or for our fish to survive as the case may be).
In this series of articles, I hope to put many of the chemical principles behind aquarium keeping into laymen’s terms. In future articles I will discuss subjects such as the nitrogen cycle, dissolved oxygen, and pH. The more we understand each of these factors in water chemistry and why they are good or bad, the more we understand our hobby as a whole. This issue’s installment is going to start at the beginning: water. Water is such a basic element of the aquarium hobby that it is often overlooked. However, it is no coincidence that water is the molecule which makes up the oceans, lakes, and rivers from which the fish we keep originate. It is because of the way that water interacts with other chemicals, itself, and our fish that the majority of life on this planet is sustained within this amazing matrix.
Water: The Molecule
Water is a molecule unlike any other. It is made up of one oxygen molecule and two hydrogen molecules. Each hydrogen forms a bond connecting it to the oxygen molecule, forming an “upside-down V” shape. If you look at the upside-down V shape of water, you will notice that the two hydrogen atoms (which have an overall positive charge) are positioned across from the oxygen atom (which has an overall negative charge). This alignment means that one side of the water molecule (the oxygen side) has a slight negative charge and vice versa. Conversely, each side will then attract molecules or ions of opposite charge. This is known as the dipolar nature of water.
At this point you’re probably having high school flashbacks, because: “Why in the world did I need to know all that, and what will I ever use it for!?!?!?!”
Water’s dipolarity is exactly what makes it such a great solvent for the laundry list of chemicals with which we aquarists worry ourselves: nitrate, ammonia, oxygen, iron, calcium, etc. All of these molecules and ions have one thing in common: they have a charge (the charge can even be a partial charge like water’s). Imagine, in your mind’s eye, a lone Calcium ion that was just dissolved into your reef aquarium by a calcium reactor. The Ca2++ has a positive charge, so when a group of water molecules encircle the calcium ion with their negative ends pointing in…Voila! The calcium ion has been dissolved.
This brings up a vital factor to the well being of your fish. Due to the way that it must organize itself in order to dissolve a chemical, water has a finite amount of space available for dissolving. Often times nitrates are brushed aside as being not dangerous to freshwater fish. However, a tank which has been ignored and allowed to build up nitrates will have significantly “less space” to dissolve critical molecules like oxygen or carbon dioxide.
Temperature
Water’s ability to dissolve is also determined by its temperature. Aquarists are interested in dissolving chemicals in every state of matter, whether it is a solid, liquid, or gas. As water temperature increases, solids and liquids tend to dissolve more readily. However, as temperature decreases, gases tend to dissolve more readily, which makes a real balancing act out of maintaining water temperature. In every aquatic environment gases, liquids and solids are essential to fish health. If you think about it, there are really very few fish that require temperatures above eighty degrees. Now you understand why keeping dissolved wastes down is so important when keeping discus at the warm temperatures they enjoy (well, actually that’s only one of many reasons). When phosphates build up due to a poor water change regimen and overfeeding, the amount of phosphate dissolved in the aquarium directly decreases the amount of “free room” water has to dissolve oxygen for the discus to breathe. Oxygen depletion has many deleterious effects on all fish, but the discus, which has evolved in oxygen-rich streams, will be doomed in water unable to dissolve much oxygen.
Saltwater
Those of us who keep marine aquariums are especially affected by the dipolar nature of water. One of the questions I was fielded the most as a pet store, fish clerk was: “Is saltwater really as hard as they say it is?” Now I could have delivered this article in a brilliant oratory transcription, but a) the customer was probably just curious b) “yes” is a whole lot quicker. In fact, the reason that “saltwater is as hard as they say it is”, is due to water’s dipolarity. Saltwater, of course, must first dissolve a series of salts to fulfill the proper salinity before it can begin to dissolve other essential molecules or ions. While most of the people who approached me about starting a saltwater would consider the proper maintenance behind a marine aquarium overbearing, the knowledgeable hobbyist has a number simple of methods at his/her disposal to keep the tank free of excess waste molecules. Protein skimmers, macro-algae cultivation, and deep sandbeds are just three methods aquarists use to remove excess, waste byproducts.
I personally have a 29-gallon mini-reef aquarium, which has been a constant bear; because of saltwater’s reduced ability to dissolve essential molecules. A 65W power compact light fixture and a 20W normal output light fixture light the tank. This amount of light raises the temperature into the mid-eighties, at which point all the corals begin to bleach from insufficient dissolved oxygen. I use a fan to keep the temperature down, but this causes a great deal of evaporation. The confines of my small, one-room apartment prohibit an automatic top-off system, thus requiring me to manually top-off the aquarium with kalkwasser throughout the day. This is merely one obstacle in the three-ring circus balancing act that is my mini-reef aquarium.
Osmosis
All of these ions and molecules that we are dissolving in water don’t just “sit there”. They are constantly moving so that they are equally dispersed throughout a body of water. Imagine a ten-gallon aquarium, filled with distilled water, divided into two compartments with a piece of steel. If only one side was adjusted to a salinity of 33, as soon as the piece of steel is removed, the salt ions would slowly distribute themselves so that the entire aquarium registered a salinity of 16.5 (exactly half of 33). This phenomenon is called diffusion.
All of the salt ions, bouncing off of the steel divider, were exerting a certain amount of pressure on the piece of steel, specifically called: osmotic pressure. The higher the salt concentration, the greater the osmotic pressure. Steel is an incredibly impermeable material, but our fish’s cellular membranes are not. In order to prevent a virtual implosion, our fish’s cellular membranes are actually permeable to small ions and water. This means that if the water outside of a fish’s cells has more dissolved ions than the water inside of its cells (i.e. osmotic pressure is greater outside of the fish’s cell); the fish’s cell membrane allows small ions to diffuse into the cell and water to exit the cell until the osmotic pressure is equalized. Every living creature that makes water its home has to be able to deal with osmotic pressure in this manner. Although we take it for granted, this is probably the cell’s membrane most important function.
After thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, if not a million years, of adaptation, all aquatic creatures are used to a certain amount of natural fluctuation in osmotic pressure. This is another illustration of why saltwater is deemed: “harder than freshwater”. Since the vast volume of the ocean provides for pretty consistent water parameters, corals, sea stars, butterfly fish, etc. are very intolerant of changes in salinity, pH, etc. However, some freshwater fish actually require relatively drastic changes in water parameters to breed (some goes as far a requiring no water for a short period of time, ala many killifishes). Nonetheless these changes happen within a certain range, and due to years of evolution, anything outside of this range is often lethal.
Hopefully all of this painful chemistry sheds a little more light on the “fish-keeping experience”. We now know that water’s dipolarity makes water one of the best solvents on earth, however, with a limited capacity. We’ve also learned that the more molecules that water has to dissolve, the less space water has to dissolve essential ions and molecules for our fish. The higher the water temperature, the more readily solids and liquids will dissolve, while conversely limiting how much gas can be dissolved. Finally, as the molecules and ions that water dissolves move about, they exert a certain amount of pressure on our fish called osmotic pressure. Stay tuned for the next episode, when I will cover everything you ever waned to know about conductivity and water hardness. These two water parameters measure how many molecules and ions are dissolved in water, and directly reflect the amount of osmotic pressure exerted upon our fish. In the meantime let’s keep learning about and caring for our fish.
Part 1: The Molecule, Temperature, Saltwater, and Osmosis
by Lenny Llambi
First published in Fincinnati, the official newsletter of the Greater Cincinnati Aquarium Society
Aquarticles.com
One crucial component of the aquarium hobby that helps the hobbyist in his/her venture is knowledge. Aquarium keeping is an interesting hobby in that it combines principles from physics, chemistry, and biology. The more we understand each of the principles within these disciplines, the easier our hobby becomes. Of course, biology is the most understood of the three fields, because lets face it our final goal is to maintain living creatures. However, much like junior year in high school, we need to understand a basic level of chemistry to survive (or for our fish to survive as the case may be).
In this series of articles, I hope to put many of the chemical principles behind aquarium keeping into laymen’s terms. In future articles I will discuss subjects such as the nitrogen cycle, dissolved oxygen, and pH. The more we understand each of these factors in water chemistry and why they are good or bad, the more we understand our hobby as a whole. This issue’s installment is going to start at the beginning: water. Water is such a basic element of the aquarium hobby that it is often overlooked. However, it is no coincidence that water is the molecule which makes up the oceans, lakes, and rivers from which the fish we keep originate. It is because of the way that water interacts with other chemicals, itself, and our fish that the majority of life on this planet is sustained within this amazing matrix.
Water: The Molecule
Water is a molecule unlike any other. It is made up of one oxygen molecule and two hydrogen molecules. Each hydrogen forms a bond connecting it to the oxygen molecule, forming an “upside-down V” shape. If you look at the upside-down V shape of water, you will notice that the two hydrogen atoms (which have an overall positive charge) are positioned across from the oxygen atom (which has an overall negative charge). This alignment means that one side of the water molecule (the oxygen side) has a slight negative charge and vice versa. Conversely, each side will then attract molecules or ions of opposite charge. This is known as the dipolar nature of water.
At this point you’re probably having high school flashbacks, because: “Why in the world did I need to know all that, and what will I ever use it for!?!?!?!”
Water’s dipolarity is exactly what makes it such a great solvent for the laundry list of chemicals with which we aquarists worry ourselves: nitrate, ammonia, oxygen, iron, calcium, etc. All of these molecules and ions have one thing in common: they have a charge (the charge can even be a partial charge like water’s). Imagine, in your mind’s eye, a lone Calcium ion that was just dissolved into your reef aquarium by a calcium reactor. The Ca2++ has a positive charge, so when a group of water molecules encircle the calcium ion with their negative ends pointing in…Voila! The calcium ion has been dissolved.
This brings up a vital factor to the well being of your fish. Due to the way that it must organize itself in order to dissolve a chemical, water has a finite amount of space available for dissolving. Often times nitrates are brushed aside as being not dangerous to freshwater fish. However, a tank which has been ignored and allowed to build up nitrates will have significantly “less space” to dissolve critical molecules like oxygen or carbon dioxide.
Temperature
Water’s ability to dissolve is also determined by its temperature. Aquarists are interested in dissolving chemicals in every state of matter, whether it is a solid, liquid, or gas. As water temperature increases, solids and liquids tend to dissolve more readily. However, as temperature decreases, gases tend to dissolve more readily, which makes a real balancing act out of maintaining water temperature. In every aquatic environment gases, liquids and solids are essential to fish health. If you think about it, there are really very few fish that require temperatures above eighty degrees. Now you understand why keeping dissolved wastes down is so important when keeping discus at the warm temperatures they enjoy (well, actually that’s only one of many reasons). When phosphates build up due to a poor water change regimen and overfeeding, the amount of phosphate dissolved in the aquarium directly decreases the amount of “free room” water has to dissolve oxygen for the discus to breathe. Oxygen depletion has many deleterious effects on all fish, but the discus, which has evolved in oxygen-rich streams, will be doomed in water unable to dissolve much oxygen.
Saltwater
Those of us who keep marine aquariums are especially affected by the dipolar nature of water. One of the questions I was fielded the most as a pet store, fish clerk was: “Is saltwater really as hard as they say it is?” Now I could have delivered this article in a brilliant oratory transcription, but a) the customer was probably just curious b) “yes” is a whole lot quicker. In fact, the reason that “saltwater is as hard as they say it is”, is due to water’s dipolarity. Saltwater, of course, must first dissolve a series of salts to fulfill the proper salinity before it can begin to dissolve other essential molecules or ions. While most of the people who approached me about starting a saltwater would consider the proper maintenance behind a marine aquarium overbearing, the knowledgeable hobbyist has a number simple of methods at his/her disposal to keep the tank free of excess waste molecules. Protein skimmers, macro-algae cultivation, and deep sandbeds are just three methods aquarists use to remove excess, waste byproducts.
I personally have a 29-gallon mini-reef aquarium, which has been a constant bear; because of saltwater’s reduced ability to dissolve essential molecules. A 65W power compact light fixture and a 20W normal output light fixture light the tank. This amount of light raises the temperature into the mid-eighties, at which point all the corals begin to bleach from insufficient dissolved oxygen. I use a fan to keep the temperature down, but this causes a great deal of evaporation. The confines of my small, one-room apartment prohibit an automatic top-off system, thus requiring me to manually top-off the aquarium with kalkwasser throughout the day. This is merely one obstacle in the three-ring circus balancing act that is my mini-reef aquarium.
Osmosis
All of these ions and molecules that we are dissolving in water don’t just “sit there”. They are constantly moving so that they are equally dispersed throughout a body of water. Imagine a ten-gallon aquarium, filled with distilled water, divided into two compartments with a piece of steel. If only one side was adjusted to a salinity of 33, as soon as the piece of steel is removed, the salt ions would slowly distribute themselves so that the entire aquarium registered a salinity of 16.5 (exactly half of 33). This phenomenon is called diffusion.
All of the salt ions, bouncing off of the steel divider, were exerting a certain amount of pressure on the piece of steel, specifically called: osmotic pressure. The higher the salt concentration, the greater the osmotic pressure. Steel is an incredibly impermeable material, but our fish’s cellular membranes are not. In order to prevent a virtual implosion, our fish’s cellular membranes are actually permeable to small ions and water. This means that if the water outside of a fish’s cells has more dissolved ions than the water inside of its cells (i.e. osmotic pressure is greater outside of the fish’s cell); the fish’s cell membrane allows small ions to diffuse into the cell and water to exit the cell until the osmotic pressure is equalized. Every living creature that makes water its home has to be able to deal with osmotic pressure in this manner. Although we take it for granted, this is probably the cell’s membrane most important function.
After thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, if not a million years, of adaptation, all aquatic creatures are used to a certain amount of natural fluctuation in osmotic pressure. This is another illustration of why saltwater is deemed: “harder than freshwater”. Since the vast volume of the ocean provides for pretty consistent water parameters, corals, sea stars, butterfly fish, etc. are very intolerant of changes in salinity, pH, etc. However, some freshwater fish actually require relatively drastic changes in water parameters to breed (some goes as far a requiring no water for a short period of time, ala many killifishes). Nonetheless these changes happen within a certain range, and due to years of evolution, anything outside of this range is often lethal.
Hopefully all of this painful chemistry sheds a little more light on the “fish-keeping experience”. We now know that water’s dipolarity makes water one of the best solvents on earth, however, with a limited capacity. We’ve also learned that the more molecules that water has to dissolve, the less space water has to dissolve essential ions and molecules for our fish. The higher the water temperature, the more readily solids and liquids will dissolve, while conversely limiting how much gas can be dissolved. Finally, as the molecules and ions that water dissolves move about, they exert a certain amount of pressure on our fish called osmotic pressure. Stay tuned for the next episode, when I will cover everything you ever waned to know about conductivity and water hardness. These two water parameters measure how many molecules and ions are dissolved in water, and directly reflect the amount of osmotic pressure exerted upon our fish. In the meantime let’s keep learning about and caring for our fish.
Part 2: Conductivity and General Hardness
The Stuff That Water’s Made Of
Part 2: Conductivity and General Hardness
by Lenny Llambi
First published in Fincinnati, the official newsletter of the Greater Cincinnati Aquarium Society
Aquarticles.com
In the previous article we discussed water’s ability to dissolve ions and molecules (solutes) is determined by the fact that the water molecule has two polar, opposite charges (dipolarity). We also examined how our fish are able to pump water and other small molecules across their cell membranes, in order to match the concentration of solutes within their cells to the concentration of solutes outside of their cells. In this edition we will examine two water parameters which measure the amount of solute (to varying degrees) in your aquarium water: Conductivity and General Hardness.
Conductivity
Conductivity may not be a water parameter that we worry about all day long, but not only does it need to be explained to understand all other water parameters; I think it needs to be understood better to become a better aquarist. Conductivity is a substance’s ability to “carry” an electrical current. We’ve all done the grade-school experiment with the potato, light bulb, and battery, but did you know that you could substitute the potato for a glass of tap water? The more ions and molecules that are dissolved in water (remember a chemical must have a charge in order to be dissolved by water), the more electrical current that water is able to conduce. As a matter of fact, conductivity is synonymous with the term Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), which is measured in parts per million (ppm). In order to convert TDS to conductivity, simply multiply TDS by 0.64. I hope everyone reading this article now understands why I am covering this water parameter before I go into other, more common water parameters. I guess you could look at conductivity, or TDS, as the mother of all water parameters, because it essentially measures all dissolved ions and molecules.
Conductivity is measured in microSiemens ( S), and is directly proportional to the amount of osmotic pressure exerted on our fish’s cellular membranes. Distilled water has a conductivity of 0 S, whereas seawater has a conductivity of about 5000 S. Every chemical, additive, piece of food, medication, or conditioner you put into your tank increases the conductivity in your aquarium, once the water dissolves it. This is why it is essential that any fish that you are adding to your aquarium be acclimated to your aquarium water before it is released. Your fish needs as much time as possible to slowly pump the proper amount of water in or out, so that the osmotic pressure is equalized across its cell membrane.
What Goes In Must Equal What Comes Out
Looking back at my tenure as a fish clerk in several different stores, I realize now how essential it is to be aware of your water’s conductivity. When I would place a fish order at one of those stores, the supplier would bag several well-fed (i.e. waste-producing) fish in a little bag with water from a tank with, lets say, a conductivity of 500 S. He would always use a very thick stress coat and drop in a tablet of some sort of methyl-blue prophylactic, probably increasing the bag to a conductivity of 650 S. Eight hours later, when the shipment arrives, this bag of waste-producing fish has a conductivity of 1000 S. Since our fish supplier was local, our tap water had similar conductivity readings; so when I received this order of fish I had to slowly reduce the conductivity by fifty percent.
That store had an automatic top-off system so daily water changes maintained a fairly constant conductivity. However other stores are not so generous with water changes. This becomes a problem in overcrowded and overfed tanks, especially when the top-off water is tap water of high conductivity. I have read about people buying freshwater fish that were being kept in 5000 S water at the store. Although this is probably an extreme, when you watch all of the stress coats, aquarium salts, and medications that are indiscriminately poured into some store tanks, its not such an extreme number. This is one reason why, especially in smaller tanks, you should not add water from the bag you received from your local fish store. Now if you purchase a fish from a fellow aquarium society member, you’re probably safe assuming that their water-change regimen is keeping their conductivity at a comparable level. Even then, if you ever acquire any of my fish, you may want to get a feeling for how busy my life has been (that is also directly proportional to my water’s conductivity).
Conductive Spawning
As I mentioned before, many fish are capable of withstanding a broad range of conductivity levels. These fish are also more resistant to changes in conductivity. Many of these fish actually require changes in conductivity in order to come into breeding condition. Two fish species, whose breeding behavior is very elusive, exemplify two extremes. Monodactylus sebae, which can live in fresh as well as marine water, was recently reported only breeding in seawater where its microscopic, larval progeny can enter the planktonic drifts in the ocean. Once a larva reaches the free-swimming, fry stage, it is able to swim further into fresher waters, as it grows.
Botia macracanthus (the Clown Loach) has been reported spawning, accidentally, after its aquarium is “neglected” (i.e. not fed often, not topped off, and not cleaned), then pumping the aquarium full of distilled water after a large water change. By not performing water changes, nitrates and phosphates build up and increase the conductivity. Moreover, ceasing to top-off any evaporated water decreases the amount of water dissolving the solutes in the water, once again increasing conductivity. When a water change is performed, and the aquarium is topped-off with distilled water, the conductivity drops drastically, and the clown loach begins its elusive spawning behavior. This method replicates the dynamic between the dry season and the rain season (when the clown loach breeds).
General Hardness
General Hardness (GH) is a misleading term, because it is actually derived from the German: Gesamt Haerte. It is often confused with a term that we will discuss in the next edition of this article: Carbonate Hardness (KH). Since KH is actually alkalinity, not hardness, the term general hardness should probably be abandoned for the simpler term: Hardness. Water hardness measures the amount of ions which have two extra protons (divalent cations) dissolved in our aquarium water. The most common, divalent cations (almost to the exclusion of all others) that make up a Hardness reading are Calcium and Magnesium. These two ions are essential for bone and scale formation, blood clotting, the importation of other ions, electrical current transfers in nerves and muscles, and numerous other metabolic processes.
Just as confusing its name are the terms we use to measure general hardness. The two most common units used are ppm (more common in the U.S.A.) and dH (German degrees of hardness). In order to convert these two parameters, simply use the following equations: dH x 17.9 = ppm ppm x 0.056 = dH
Many popular fish species such as: discus, dwarf cichlids, and killifish come from soft, and acidic environments, and often require these same parameters to breed. Although the GH readings in these environments are well below those found say in the African rift lakes, a certain amount of hardness needs to be maintained, because of calcium’s and magnesium’s importance to fish development. Fish take in calcium and magnesium mainly through their gills, so these two ions need to be present in water for our fish to develop properly. Actually, if you ever invest in a Reverse Osmosis/De-Ionization unit (RO/DI), it is best (and probably cheaper) that you purchase a unit that is manufactured for use by aquarists. These units do not produce pure water (0 S) Instead they produce “product water” (20-30 S), which simply means that the water has a minimal amount of ions in the water, typically: magnesium and calcium.
Even though most of us don’t concern ourselves with conductivity and general hardness on a day-in day-out basis, our fish certainly do. Conductivity is probably the number one reason fish get stressed when being transferred from one environ to another. The more conductive water is the more osmotic pressure that is exerted on our fish. General hardness may not immediately kill a fish when the parameter falls below a particular level, but it will hamper fish development and many biological processes. This isn’t the first time I’ve said it, and it won’t be the last: we must always remain conscientious of where our fish originate, because this determines what water parameters are acceptable to our aqueous pets. A discus may readily prosper in our unnatural (for discus), Cincinnati tap water (liquid-rock as many of us refer to it). However, you will be hard-pressed to nurture a young Julidochromis marlieri to a healthy adulthood in water of low general hardness. Next issue we’ll venture into some familiar water by exploring pH and the “other hardness”: carbonate hardness, or alkalinity. In the meantime let’s keep learning about and caring for our fish.
Part 2: Conductivity and General Hardness
by Lenny Llambi
First published in Fincinnati, the official newsletter of the Greater Cincinnati Aquarium Society
Aquarticles.com
In the previous article we discussed water’s ability to dissolve ions and molecules (solutes) is determined by the fact that the water molecule has two polar, opposite charges (dipolarity). We also examined how our fish are able to pump water and other small molecules across their cell membranes, in order to match the concentration of solutes within their cells to the concentration of solutes outside of their cells. In this edition we will examine two water parameters which measure the amount of solute (to varying degrees) in your aquarium water: Conductivity and General Hardness.
Conductivity
Conductivity may not be a water parameter that we worry about all day long, but not only does it need to be explained to understand all other water parameters; I think it needs to be understood better to become a better aquarist. Conductivity is a substance’s ability to “carry” an electrical current. We’ve all done the grade-school experiment with the potato, light bulb, and battery, but did you know that you could substitute the potato for a glass of tap water? The more ions and molecules that are dissolved in water (remember a chemical must have a charge in order to be dissolved by water), the more electrical current that water is able to conduce. As a matter of fact, conductivity is synonymous with the term Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), which is measured in parts per million (ppm). In order to convert TDS to conductivity, simply multiply TDS by 0.64. I hope everyone reading this article now understands why I am covering this water parameter before I go into other, more common water parameters. I guess you could look at conductivity, or TDS, as the mother of all water parameters, because it essentially measures all dissolved ions and molecules.
Conductivity is measured in microSiemens ( S), and is directly proportional to the amount of osmotic pressure exerted on our fish’s cellular membranes. Distilled water has a conductivity of 0 S, whereas seawater has a conductivity of about 5000 S. Every chemical, additive, piece of food, medication, or conditioner you put into your tank increases the conductivity in your aquarium, once the water dissolves it. This is why it is essential that any fish that you are adding to your aquarium be acclimated to your aquarium water before it is released. Your fish needs as much time as possible to slowly pump the proper amount of water in or out, so that the osmotic pressure is equalized across its cell membrane.
What Goes In Must Equal What Comes Out
Looking back at my tenure as a fish clerk in several different stores, I realize now how essential it is to be aware of your water’s conductivity. When I would place a fish order at one of those stores, the supplier would bag several well-fed (i.e. waste-producing) fish in a little bag with water from a tank with, lets say, a conductivity of 500 S. He would always use a very thick stress coat and drop in a tablet of some sort of methyl-blue prophylactic, probably increasing the bag to a conductivity of 650 S. Eight hours later, when the shipment arrives, this bag of waste-producing fish has a conductivity of 1000 S. Since our fish supplier was local, our tap water had similar conductivity readings; so when I received this order of fish I had to slowly reduce the conductivity by fifty percent.
That store had an automatic top-off system so daily water changes maintained a fairly constant conductivity. However other stores are not so generous with water changes. This becomes a problem in overcrowded and overfed tanks, especially when the top-off water is tap water of high conductivity. I have read about people buying freshwater fish that were being kept in 5000 S water at the store. Although this is probably an extreme, when you watch all of the stress coats, aquarium salts, and medications that are indiscriminately poured into some store tanks, its not such an extreme number. This is one reason why, especially in smaller tanks, you should not add water from the bag you received from your local fish store. Now if you purchase a fish from a fellow aquarium society member, you’re probably safe assuming that their water-change regimen is keeping their conductivity at a comparable level. Even then, if you ever acquire any of my fish, you may want to get a feeling for how busy my life has been (that is also directly proportional to my water’s conductivity).
Conductive Spawning
As I mentioned before, many fish are capable of withstanding a broad range of conductivity levels. These fish are also more resistant to changes in conductivity. Many of these fish actually require changes in conductivity in order to come into breeding condition. Two fish species, whose breeding behavior is very elusive, exemplify two extremes. Monodactylus sebae, which can live in fresh as well as marine water, was recently reported only breeding in seawater where its microscopic, larval progeny can enter the planktonic drifts in the ocean. Once a larva reaches the free-swimming, fry stage, it is able to swim further into fresher waters, as it grows.
Botia macracanthus (the Clown Loach) has been reported spawning, accidentally, after its aquarium is “neglected” (i.e. not fed often, not topped off, and not cleaned), then pumping the aquarium full of distilled water after a large water change. By not performing water changes, nitrates and phosphates build up and increase the conductivity. Moreover, ceasing to top-off any evaporated water decreases the amount of water dissolving the solutes in the water, once again increasing conductivity. When a water change is performed, and the aquarium is topped-off with distilled water, the conductivity drops drastically, and the clown loach begins its elusive spawning behavior. This method replicates the dynamic between the dry season and the rain season (when the clown loach breeds).
General Hardness
General Hardness (GH) is a misleading term, because it is actually derived from the German: Gesamt Haerte. It is often confused with a term that we will discuss in the next edition of this article: Carbonate Hardness (KH). Since KH is actually alkalinity, not hardness, the term general hardness should probably be abandoned for the simpler term: Hardness. Water hardness measures the amount of ions which have two extra protons (divalent cations) dissolved in our aquarium water. The most common, divalent cations (almost to the exclusion of all others) that make up a Hardness reading are Calcium and Magnesium. These two ions are essential for bone and scale formation, blood clotting, the importation of other ions, electrical current transfers in nerves and muscles, and numerous other metabolic processes.
Just as confusing its name are the terms we use to measure general hardness. The two most common units used are ppm (more common in the U.S.A.) and dH (German degrees of hardness). In order to convert these two parameters, simply use the following equations: dH x 17.9 = ppm ppm x 0.056 = dH
Many popular fish species such as: discus, dwarf cichlids, and killifish come from soft, and acidic environments, and often require these same parameters to breed. Although the GH readings in these environments are well below those found say in the African rift lakes, a certain amount of hardness needs to be maintained, because of calcium’s and magnesium’s importance to fish development. Fish take in calcium and magnesium mainly through their gills, so these two ions need to be present in water for our fish to develop properly. Actually, if you ever invest in a Reverse Osmosis/De-Ionization unit (RO/DI), it is best (and probably cheaper) that you purchase a unit that is manufactured for use by aquarists. These units do not produce pure water (0 S) Instead they produce “product water” (20-30 S), which simply means that the water has a minimal amount of ions in the water, typically: magnesium and calcium.
Even though most of us don’t concern ourselves with conductivity and general hardness on a day-in day-out basis, our fish certainly do. Conductivity is probably the number one reason fish get stressed when being transferred from one environ to another. The more conductive water is the more osmotic pressure that is exerted on our fish. General hardness may not immediately kill a fish when the parameter falls below a particular level, but it will hamper fish development and many biological processes. This isn’t the first time I’ve said it, and it won’t be the last: we must always remain conscientious of where our fish originate, because this determines what water parameters are acceptable to our aqueous pets. A discus may readily prosper in our unnatural (for discus), Cincinnati tap water (liquid-rock as many of us refer to it). However, you will be hard-pressed to nurture a young Julidochromis marlieri to a healthy adulthood in water of low general hardness. Next issue we’ll venture into some familiar water by exploring pH and the “other hardness”: carbonate hardness, or alkalinity. In the meantime let’s keep learning about and caring for our fish.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Ketapang Leaf Black Water
To brew blackwater extract, follow the following steps:
1. Collect or purchase a bag of Indian Almond Leaves. If you purchase, Grade C leaves will be good enough, but remind your supplier not to clip off the leaf-stubs if he routinely does so.
2. Wash the leaves over running water with a stiff brush if they are not already washed. If they are already washed, rinse the leaves.
3. Get a large pot which is large enough to contain say 2 gallon ( 10 litres) of water.
4. Put about 50 (or more) leaves for each gallon of water the pot can contain.
5. Fill with clean water (preferably with chlorine and chloramine removed)
6. Weigh the leaves down with a chemically inert stone (e.g. granite).
7. Let the leaves soak in the pot for a day.
8. Boil the pot for 15-20 minutes.
9. Leave it to cool and soak for another day.
10. Boil one more time for 10-15 minutes.
11. Leave to cool. The water in the pot should be as black as thick coffee and very fragrant.
12. Filter the blackwater extract through a coffee paper filter (to trap detritus or any other insoluble matter).
13. Store the liquid in sturdy plastic or glass bottles.
14. Refrigerate or keep somewhere cool.
Dosage & Improvements
Dosage will be 1 ounce for 1 gallon (5 litres) of water in the betta tank. Use your discretion for larger tanks, but do not use more than 1 ounce for 1 gallon of water.
To improve efficiency you may also add anti-chlorine and chloramine into it, but make sure you calculate how much to add so that when you use 1 ounce of your blackwater extract, you will be able to treat 1 gallon of water (to rid it of chlorine and chloramine).
You may also add 6 ounce (1 ounce ~ 28gm) of aquarium salt to 1 gallon of the blackwater extract. The salt will cause some precipitation in the blackwater extract, but the precipitate will dissolve in water when the extract is added to the tank.
A small amount of salt is not only useful for the fish but acts as a preservative for the blackwater if you intend to store it for longer than a month. If you do not use salt, then either keep the bottle in the refrigerator or using standard canning process to give it a longer shelf-life.
1. Collect or purchase a bag of Indian Almond Leaves. If you purchase, Grade C leaves will be good enough, but remind your supplier not to clip off the leaf-stubs if he routinely does so.
2. Wash the leaves over running water with a stiff brush if they are not already washed. If they are already washed, rinse the leaves.
3. Get a large pot which is large enough to contain say 2 gallon ( 10 litres) of water.
4. Put about 50 (or more) leaves for each gallon of water the pot can contain.
5. Fill with clean water (preferably with chlorine and chloramine removed)
6. Weigh the leaves down with a chemically inert stone (e.g. granite).
7. Let the leaves soak in the pot for a day.
8. Boil the pot for 15-20 minutes.
9. Leave it to cool and soak for another day.
10. Boil one more time for 10-15 minutes.
11. Leave to cool. The water in the pot should be as black as thick coffee and very fragrant.
12. Filter the blackwater extract through a coffee paper filter (to trap detritus or any other insoluble matter).
13. Store the liquid in sturdy plastic or glass bottles.
14. Refrigerate or keep somewhere cool.
Dosage & Improvements
Dosage will be 1 ounce for 1 gallon (5 litres) of water in the betta tank. Use your discretion for larger tanks, but do not use more than 1 ounce for 1 gallon of water.
To improve efficiency you may also add anti-chlorine and chloramine into it, but make sure you calculate how much to add so that when you use 1 ounce of your blackwater extract, you will be able to treat 1 gallon of water (to rid it of chlorine and chloramine).
You may also add 6 ounce (1 ounce ~ 28gm) of aquarium salt to 1 gallon of the blackwater extract. The salt will cause some precipitation in the blackwater extract, but the precipitate will dissolve in water when the extract is added to the tank.
A small amount of salt is not only useful for the fish but acts as a preservative for the blackwater if you intend to store it for longer than a month. If you do not use salt, then either keep the bottle in the refrigerator or using standard canning process to give it a longer shelf-life.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
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