Saturday, October 13, 2007

Chemistry is fun

I haven't done much this evening. After I got back from the gym no one was really about so I stayed home chatting to people on-line and relaxing.

Since my fish died I have learned a lot about water chemistry. I learned that fish, food and plants decay into ammonia, nitrite and nitrates. High levels of Ammonia or nitrite kill fish pretty quickly. Nitrate level on the other hand don't kill immediately they just put stress on the fish. My fish tank nitrate level has been high for some time (I know this because my research has informed my large amount of algae are a sign of high nitrate levels).
Unfortunately for me nitrates are one of the most difficult pollutants to remove, all I can do is change 10% (36 litres) of the water in the tank per day and hope that they are diluted. So over the last few days I have done 4 water changes a day very tedious and time consuming. So far the level dropped from over 60ppm (parts per million) to 40ppm, I need to bring it below 20ppm for the biological agents to be effective. Look like I have plenty more water changes to go.

Tomorrow is the England France game which should be excellent and I think is going to be very close.

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