Thing Learned From the Aquarium Project

The aquarium project that was assigned to me at the beginning of the last nine weeks this semester has allowed me to gain more knowledge about caring for fish and maintaining water quality than I ever thought I'd know. To begin with, the assignment showed me how harmful ammonia can be towards my aquarium. The ammonia doesn't kill fish immediately but it does add extra stress on your fish which can lead to eventual death. Also, I learned that chlorine is the number one cause of death in aquariums. It didn't even occur to me that the water I was putting in the tank contained chlorine. Thankfully, my teachers stressed the importance of adding dechlorinator to make sure you don't kill your fish. Similarly, I learned that high nitrate levels can kill your fish. Before this project, I didn't know much about the nitrogen cycle, including how ammonia is broken down into nitrite by nitrosomonas and then broken down into nitrate by nitrobacter. Also, over time, I learned that less really is more when feeding my fish. The excess of food led to high nitrate levels, so after a bad nitrate test happened, my group and I decided to put less food in the aquarium. Lastly, you have to be careful which fish you choose to place in your aquarium because certain breeds of fish don't do well with each other and can become quite aggressive.  If I had to change this project, I would have the students take care of their fish the entire semester instead of only nine weeks, which would allow students to add more fish and become more familiar with different breeds of fish.