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Water is always a tricky topic when comes to fish keeping. Does clear water means good water?
Many people always say that my water is very clear, very clean, etc...
But what does the term "clean" means for our delicate fishes? Fishes are sensitive to chemicals,
especially to chlorine which is found in our tap water. The worse part is that now chloramine is being used instead of chlorine and chloramine does not evaporate as easily chlorine.
Chloramine is a binding of chlorine and ammonia which is another highly toxic compound to fishes. All these chemicals can be fatal in certain amount.
Anti chlorine and chloramine must be used to treat our water before we add them into the tank for our beloved fishes.
Filtration is a very important procedure to make sure our water is really clean and good for our fishes.
There are many varieties of filter available in the market. The most common ones being overhead and internal.
There are also others like cannister, sump, internal over and/or under flow systems, etc... So what does these filters do?
There are two main types of filtration, mechanical and biological. Both must work together to have clean and good water for our fishes.
Mechanical filtration means that dirt and wastes are physically removed from the tank. These are basically achieved by adding medias like filter wool, ceramic rings, etc...
to trap the dirt and waste when the water flow through the those medias.
Biological filtration is the most important filtration for our fishes. It is the process where the water in the tank is purified.
The first part of the biological filtration is the conversion of ammonia from the waste of our fishes, decomposing food, etc... into nitrite.
Ammonia is highly toxic to fishes. When the pH is lower than 7, ammonia is bonded into ammonium which is less toxic.
Ammonia is broken down into nitrite by the Nitrosomonas species of bacteria.
Nitrite is another toxic compound which must be further broken down into nitrate, the end product of the nitrogen cycle, by the Nitrobacter species of bacteria.
Therefore, we must always maintain a value of 0ppm for both ammonia and nitrite for our tank.
There are many different types of filter media made with different materials which are available for both the Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter bacteria species to colonize and purify our water.
Nitrate is required to be maintained at a value of below 50ppm for most fishes.
This can be easily achieved by changing our tank water at least once a week or more. It is recommeded to change an average of 10% to 30% to prevent stress and shock to your beloved fishes.
But those are just a guage. The rate and amount of water to be changed is highly dependent on the type and/or number of fish you keep, your filtration system, etc...
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