Field of Science

How to Kill Tropical Fish

A short while ago I was contacted by Ava of The Reef Tank, a site for keepers of tropical marine aquaria, asking if I would contribute something for their in-house blog. I did once keep a tropical (freshwater) aquarium, but sadly the main thing I learnt from the experience was that putting too much fish in the tank early on leads to their rapid demise due to the buildup of toxic nitrogen compounds (eventually, I discovered the attractive yet indestructable White Cloud mountain minnow). So I presented Ava with a piece on the bacteria responsible for maintaining the nitrogen cycle in fish tanks, and you can read it here.

8 comments:

  1. You can also kill tropical fish by letting your two-year-old son pour his orange juice into the tank!

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  2. But at least that way the fish come pre-marinaded.

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  3. It's even harder to maintain a salt water aqurium. I started one a while ago but you have to know a lot about those fish. I recently bought a book about saltwater fish and invertebrates and that really got me started.

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  4. The recent heatwave in Melbourne literally "cooked" my King Blue Tetra in my tank. Anyway, this fish has apparently been misidentified: http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/pages/item.php?news=1933

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  5. The recent heatwave in Melbourne literally "cooked" my King Blue Tetra in my tank.

    Ouch. I bet the fish was even less happy with that than you were.

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  6. Proteinase K does the job pretty well, too.

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  7. So those bottles of "Stress Zyme" bacterial inoculations don't really have the stuff needed? And the stuff that is needed hasn't been cultured successfully?

    Somebody tell Consumer Reports.

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  8. That I wouldn't know about.

    Of course, even if the inoculations don't contain the normal bacteria, maybe the inoculated bacteria could do the trick until the normal bacteria build up a big enough population? Once again, I don't know, and you'd have to look it up further.

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