Aquarium
filters are of course a very important when setting
up a new fish tank. If any area of aquarium keeping
can overwhelm, befuddle, perplex, and discourage a newcomer,
filtration is it. One look around a pet shop or a quick
flip through any of the major aquarium periodicals will
make it all too obvious -- here is a wonderland of competing
aquarium filter products, each with bold claims telling
you why it happens to be the best aquarium filter. The
choices that confronts us all, even aquatic veterans
continue to be amazed by the never-ending output of
this inventors' playground, often convince many beginners
that they are sure to make an inferior, or incorrect,
choice. See our directory
of advertising and merchants
Happily,
there are some relatively simple, time-tested solutions.
People in North America and Europe have been keeping
marine aquariums since the 1950s with little more than
a classic, and still worthy, under gravel aquarium filter.
As we shall see, it may not be state-of-the-art, but
it can still get you both simply and inexpensively into
the world a marine aquariums. Please don't jump to the
conclusion that you have to be an engineer or biochemist
who understand aquarium filtration. You can make it
is easy and cheap, or is pricey and complicated, as
your heart desires.
First,
a truism: in most ways, the quality of the sea water
and aquarium decreases with age. It gains biological
wastes and byproducts, is diminished in its buffering
capacity and pH, loses its essential trace materials,
and slowly degenerates and various other measures of
water quality.
This
is not the end of the world. Despite what you been led
to believe, the oceans reefs are neither absolutely
pristine nor immutable. Compared to most freshwater
ecosystems, the normal annual range of variations in
water measurements is much tighter on coral reefs, but
reef inhabitants to have a tolerance for different parameters.
As in fresh water systems, your first goal when setting
up an aquarium filter is to arrange for a healthy starting
water chemistry and to prevent quick and drastic changes.
After that, you must contend with the more subtle problems
brought on by slowly declined water quality.
Removing
organics in the form of nitrogenous wastes (ammonia,
nitrites, nitrates), phenols, scatols, and other pollutants,
is the principal goal of aquarium filtration. You might
ask,"why don't you see filters on the reefs in
the wild?"actually, you do.
Your
underwater, take a look. There really is a lot of water
per unit of livestock, and plenty of circulation and
aeration coming from the wave action and the ties. Notice
that the predominant forms of life around you like corals,
sponges, and bivalves of all sorts. What mold of food
gathering to the employee? They're mainly filter feeders,
sieving out plankton, gametes, wastes, and suspended
inorganic material. These filter feeders are one reason
the water is so clear. Stuck in and among their life
forms are algae - some obvious, others microscopic,
still others living within the tissues of certain reef
invertebrates - absorbing nutrients and making fixed
carbon and oxygen through photosynthesis.
Now
consider the environment in a typical aquarium tank
setup - a small water volume of the lots of fish, happily
overfed, and few, if any, plants or filter feeders.
No wonder there is a continuous battle to limit the
buildup of their waste and a constant quest to build
a better filter system.
We
typically think of four types of filtration as appropriate
for home aquariums: mechanical, chemical, biological,
and physical. The chemical filtration removes undissolved
particulate matter from the aquarium water by trapping
debris in sand or polyester pads, for example. In chemical
filtration, dissolved pollutants are removed from the
water by absorption, adsorption, or ion exchange. The
most common example is the use of activated carbon (sometimes
known as aquarium charcoal) to extract molecules of
dissolved organic wastes. Biological aquarium filtration
occurs when beneficial bacteria transformed toxic nitrogenous
wastes into less toxic forms. Physical aquarium filtration,
for our purposes, will encompass the use of protein
skimmers, ozonizers, and ultraviolet (UV) sterilization
units.
Many
types of commonly available aquarium filters can buy
mechanical, chemical and biological filtration and the
same unit or assemblage of components. Protein skimming
may be incorporated as well, well the use of all his
own and UV sterilization are generally found only in
more advanced systems. Unlike the saltwater partners
of generations ago, we have an unprecedented arsenal
today of filtration tools that can maintain water quality,
and the health of our fishes and invertebrates, as never
before.
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