Weeks ago, my roommate and I bought an aquarium,an external filter, a number of Angelfishes,not to mention a large piece of bog wood as a starter for the decoration and black sands for the floor.Once we settle down in the room, we began to rinse the substrate,the wood and the dusty aquarium.As soon as we set up the aquarium, we started to filled in gallons of Reverse Osmosis, RO, water (despite with the water crisis in my hostel) into the aquarium. We release the fishes into the newly set up aquarium. My roommate was happy with the view, so do I.
However, few days later the water gets cloudy, and days after that, one of the Angelfishes die. My roommates changed the water by himself in the end. The guilty of not doing anything struck me.
It reminds me of myself when I had an aquarium of my own for the first time. I was in Matriculation if I am not mistaken. My aquarium consists of guppies, and substrates. I reared guppies and all of them DIE within 3 days.
I was curious, and did some research. I found out there was no oxygen supply,thus,I bought few aquatic plants.(and some new guppies). Again, the guppies die few days after that.
Filled with curiosity,I decided to read more books and did more deep research. As a result,I found out about NITROGEN CYCLE and what is more important,the aquatic plants i bought last time was nearly wilt,so the plant couldn't really contribute to the nitrogen cycle.
NITROGEN CYCLE is the process where the ammonia is cycled into nitrate where the plant uptake the nitrate as a fertilisers.
"UPtake,huh?" so there i was, acting like a smart alec, dashed to the the nearest pond at my hostel and collect few floating plants and put it into my aquarium.
"there, plants with roots should be able to take in more nitrate." Happily, I smiled and proud with my own act.
On the next day, all fishes die. and when I read about aquatic plants, I found out the plants that I took were 'Water Hyacinth' which are well known of its ability to absorb and store CYANIDE. The guppy must have eaten the roots since they are frenzy grazers!!
