Hi, I’m Walter the fish, and I want to teach you about my world! Let’s start with learning about the water I spend my life in. One of the most important things in my wet world is called the nitrogen cycle. Let’s find out what that is!
The nitrogen cycle starts with you feeding me fish food. After I eat it, I’ll end up creating waste. Yes, that’s a nice way of saying I’ll poop! YUCK . This waste falls to the bottom of the tank, where it breaks down into a chemical called ammonia. Ammonia is the first form the chemical nitrogen takes in fish tanks. That’s why it’s called the nitrogen cycle! It’s the steps that nitrogen goes through in the water.
You may have heard of ammonia before. It’s sometimes used by humans to clean things. In fact, it’s the main part of a cleaner called Windex, which you use to clean glass and mirrors. But you wouldn’t want to drink it or it would make you sick! Well guess what? It makes fish sick too!
Thankfully there are tiny bacteria that love the taste of ammonia and will eat it up. The bacteria called nitrosomonas eat the ammonia and turn it into a second form of nitrogen called nitrites. Yep, that means the bacteria eat ammonia and poop out nitrites! Nitrites aren’t as bad for fish as ammonia is, but I still don’t like them very much.
The good thing here is that there’s another type of bacteria, called Nitrobacter. Aren’t these names funny? Anyhow, Nitrobacter like to eat the nitrites the first type of bacteria poop out. Then they get rid of it as waste in the third form of nitrogen called nitrates. Yep, even MORE poop! Nitrates are much better for fish!
However, even nitrates can hurt me if there is too much in the water. That’s why I need some of the water in my tank changed every week, to help get rid of the extra nitrates. Hopefully my new owner will do that for me!
So all this sounds great, but you might be wondering how those 2 helpful types of bacteria can get into my tank. There are a few different ways, but one is to put special liquid in the water that already has lots of the bacteria in it. I’ve heard that’s what you’re doing, so thanks for helping make the water I’m going to be in clean so I can be healthy and happy. I can’t wait to meet you!
Comments