Fish Quiz

[malfunction]

Yep, that's what I was looking for.

For anyone who didn't know, ageing water involves leaving it out for a period before adding it to your tank. This allows the chlorine in the water to evaporate. As chloramine is more stable, it doesn't evaporate, so ageing water has no effect on its levels.

Over to you, nortonmad.

 

[nortonmad213]

Ummm gotta think now.
What is one of the risks of having deep sand

 

[malfunction]

You risk anaerobic areas building up, which in turn encourage certain bacteria to produce hydrogen sulphide, a chemical which is toxic to aquatic (and terrestrial) animals.

 

[nortonmad213]

bingo you got it. your go

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Apologies for this short hijack-
 
Why do I dislike this thread, let me count the ways. Lets talk chloramine
 

 
The best information I have found about chloramine and chloramine removal for human purposes comes from the SF water department:
 
"Chloramine is not a persistent disinfectant and decomposes easily from a chemistry point of view (Valentine et al, 1998) but for water supply purposes chloramine is stable and it takes days to dissipate in the absence of substances exerting chloramine demand (Wilczak et al., 2003b). Therefore, it is not practical to remove chloramine by letting an open container of water stand because it may take days for chloramine to dissipate......."

from http/www.iuhoakland.com/Chloramine.pdf
 
SF = San Franciso
 
Between taking days and never there is an awful lot of time in between
 
And the risk of any deep substrate bed, not just sand, which is not planted is one thing and when planted another. If you have live plants in a deep bed (deep up to a realistic point of course) the plants aerate the substrate and there are anoxic pockets in which bacteria convert nitrate to a nitrogen gas. Aerobic = no O at all in any form while anoxic = no free O but containing bound O. And example of bound O is nitrate, NO3, which has three O. Scavenge that O and what remains in N. And that is denitrification.
 
We now return you to the regularly scheduled thread.

 

[malfunction]

Ya learn something new everyday! Your point on chloramine is noted twotanks - thanks for the info.

Anyhoo, despite the errors in my last answer, I think I can still get away with posing another question:

Despite being very attractive, why aren't hillstream loaches recommended for typical community set ups?

 

[Baccus]

Depending on which "hillstream" your referring to but generally they need strong currents and cool water (ie specialised habitats), also if your talking about  Sewellia sp, they can be a bit aggressive amongst their own kind but generally peaceful towards other fish.

 

[malfunction]

Over to you, Baccus. I was referring to hillstream loaches in general, rather than an individual species...coming from riverine environments, they need high flow, delivering highly oxygenated water.