Ken Wilson wrote:
How much water movement is appropriate really depends on the species.
Gouramis live in still water in the wild. They don't like moving
water. Moving water also destroys their bubble nests.
Yes - i noticed him (it? dunno - my wife wanted an electric blue fish and i
know which side my bread is buttered - or rather who butters it) blowing
bubbles - but his mate died in a loss of plot incident in my old tank (about
half the size ) about a year ago. so it will have to remain spinsterish
becuase i understand two male gouramis get territorial and that winds me up.
My advice is to turn your filter to maximum water flow and aim the
water stream at the nearest wall. This way you have maximum water flow
without the excessive water movement.
Thanks.
You are wrong. The filter does not remove nitrate. It converts
ammonium and nitrite into nitrate.
i understood that the bacteria turned ammonia to nitrite and that others
turned that into nitrate - and that the name of the game was to encourage
the wee beasties to grow on the filter media - but i also thought that the
nitrate was gobbled up by the live plants (aside form the water change
method) but that it needed lots of aeration of the water to do so. when i
turn the flow up I twiddle the aeration button at the same time to give lots
of bubbles and i thought that was helping to reduce the nitrate level BELOW
the level coming in from my tap water (as it is eg today). Can't find where
i got this notion from though - how far out is it?
ken
You're not too far out. Bacteria take ammonia through nitrite to
nitrate. Plants can also use ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. And yes,
enough rapidly growing plants can pull nitrates down very low. Plants
don't need any more aeration than fish, though. What you're doing is
equalizing the CO2 with atmospheric so the plants always have some CO2
around to use. As long as there's some surface splash or movement, you
should have adequate gas exchange for both fish and plants.
Folks with heavily planted tanks actually add CO2 to the water from
tanks or yeast brews. Then they turn off all aeration and reduce
surface splash to keep the CO2 higher than what normally dissolves from
the atmosphere. The fish have plenty of oxygen from the plants, and the
plants grow much faster.
--
Elaine T __
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