In March students started Fish Club. It’s a club that involves students managing a system and learning more about Environments. This particular environment is a freshwater aquatic environment. The class is learning to manage the different variables of this complicated system in order to keep our fish alive. Our aquarium is an 80 gallon rectangular prism.

In the last week we’ve hit a couple of obstacles that may prevent us from keeping our fish healthy. The Fish Club team noticed our nitrate and ammonia levels were rising. Also, Fish Club has spotted at least 2 fish with Ich. So, we’ve had to do some research. What are nitrates? How do they form? How do we get rid of them? What’s Ich? How do we get rid of it? To help our class connect the dots I’ve created some links with some information that should help us understand the answers to these questions better.

Nitrogen Cycle (Note: The graphic on this page helps us understand the Nitrogen Cycle in a simple way from the fish’s perspective.)

Ich-Ichthyophthirius multifiliis

We’ve started to test the water weekly to manage the aquarium system and basically keep an eye on things. Our general observation is that our water quality has varied quite a bit. For instance, the nitrates have been between 40-80 ppm. We have decided to run an experiment in an attempt to improve it. I’ve presented a question to the class…What might stabilize our aquarium water quality? Some of the students had the idea of changing the water? I asked, “How often?” We discussed it further and decided that we will change the water 2 times each week and conduct a 20% water change each time. This might help us keep the toxins built up in the aquarium out. Our experiment will be a controlled experiment. In other words, the only change that will be made to the system will be a water change. The class will follow a specific procedure. We will try and build it on Monday when everyone returns from break. Hopefully our fish will be alive when we return. If you think you know how the toxins were able to find there way into our tank, I’d love to hear from you. Why have the ammonia and nitrate levels increased?