Daily Record 9/30/10

Tank stats:

• Temperature: 73 degrees Fahrenheit 
• pH: 7.0
• CO2: 12 ppm
• NH3: 0 ppm
• NO2: 0 ppm
• NO3: 0 ppm
• PO4: 0 ppm

Today we changed our water, fed the fish the frozen food tablet, and cleaned the algae off the tank.

Tank photo: 

Daily Record 9/29

Temp: 72 degrees Fahrenheit
pH: 7.2
CO2: 7.6 ppm
NH3: 0.25
NO2: 0 ppm
NO3: 0 ppm
PO4: N/A

Daily Record 9/28/10

Tank Stats:

• Temperature: 72 degrees Fahrenheit
• pH: 7.2
• KH: 4
• GH: N/A
• CO2: 7.6 ppm
• NH3: 0.25
• NO2: 0 ppm
• NO3: 0 ppm
• PO4: N/A

Yesterday we went to Aquarium Adventures and got our supplies. The supplies we got were not for our original plan because we were advised that the original plan would be very strenuous. 

In this new design we have dwarf hairgrass, gold white cloud mountain minnows, hillstream loaches, and three zebra rocks. We got all of this at Aquarium Adventures plus excellent advise from the employees. In this design we will have the dwarf hairgrass making a carpet over the gravel with the three zebra rocks piled on each other off to the side.

Today our CO2 injector exploded and now we have to revise the design and make a new injector. We also cleaned our tank and feed the fish 1/8 of a frozen food tablet.

Tank photo:

Preparing for Aquarium Adventures

Today we prepared for our trip to Aquarium Adventures on Monday. At Aquarium Adventures, we will be purchasing fish, fixtures, plants, and other objects based on what we need and what we want to add to our aquarium.

We decided today as a team to make a few adjustments to our plan,

• We decided to stick to smaller fish as it would look great to have a large school of small fish swimming around our large Amazon Sword plants.
• We are going to take a look online as to what small fish/plants we are going to purchase on Monday. We plan to try to focus on getting fish which are less than an inch in size and plants that will add a "meadow" feel or a "jungle" look to our aquarium.
• We learned today that to grow Glossostigma successfully, we would need about 80 Watts worth of light. We plan to design or bring in a light fixture with Fluorescent Day-Adjusted Blue light bulbs to provide the light we need.
• Once we get to Aquarium Adventures, we've decided to focus more on our plants before our fish as we still are unsure as to what we wish to purchase.

 Later today we will be posting facts about our fish/plants, stay tuned!

Daily Record 9/24/10

Tank Stats 9/24/10:

• Temperature: 76.5 degrees Fahrenheit  
• pH: 7.2
• Co2: 9.5 ppm
• NH3 (Ammonium): 0ppm
• No2 (Nitrite): 0 ppm
• No3 (Nitrate): 0 ppm
• Po4 (Phosphate): 0 ppm

 Tasks:

• Measuring tank stats (Phil, Alana, Tia)
• Planning (Everyone)

Budget:

• $202 available.
• $169.81 after reimbursement

Daily Record 9/23/10

Tank Stats:

• Temperature: 76 degrees Fahrenheit  
• pH: 7.6
• CO2: 3.8 ppm
• NH3 (Ammonium): 0ppm
• NO2 (Nitrite): 0 ppm
• NO3 (Nitrate): 0 ppm
• PO4 (Phosphate): 0 ppm

Tasks: 

• Tank Maintenance- Alex
• Have not added fish food yet
• Measuring tank stats- Evan, Alex, and Leah
• Budget:- Jorden and Alana 
• total money raised: $145. 81
• total cost of items: approximately $66.47
• remaining money: $79.34

• Search for more fish species- Evan and Travis
• Mini presentation on what the group is planning for the tank- Leah, Phil, and Alana

Cleaning Snails!!


Tank Photo:

Daily Record 9/22/10

Tank Stats:

• Temperature: 77 degrees Fahrenheit 
• pH: 7.6
• Carbonate Hardness: 5
• General Hardness: N/A for today
• CO2: 3.8 ppm
• NH3 (Ammonia): 0.25 ppm
• NO2 (Nitrite): 0 ppm
• NO3 (Nitrate): 0 ppm
• PO4 (Phosphate): 0 ppm

Tasks:

• Measuring tank stats- Tia and Alana
• Tank Maintenance- Alex
• Finding prices:- Jorden and Travis
• Amazon Sword: $12
• Cardinal tetras: $6.99
• Neon Tetras: $3.99
• Drift Wood: $8-35
• Ambulia: $3.49
• Angelfish: $16-30
• Finished the 2-D tank design:- Leah and Phil

• Tank Photo:

Biology Aquarium Ideas, "Stuff we like"

• Sky Background
• Smooth Rocks
• Simple and meadow look
• Schools of small fish
• Ground cover (baby tear drops)
• Red melon sword plant; glossostigma 
• Ccam flourish tablets
• Allodia
• Otosyncles 
• Cardinal tetras and runny nose tetras  
• Amazon swords

Here are a few aquariums that really caught our eye:

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Tank Setup 9/17/10

1.            Disable CO2 injector- Evan
   2.     Unplugging heater, filters, and lights- Tia and Jorden
   3.     Remove lights and lid from tank- Alex
   4.     Place damp paper towels on a table so that plants don't dry out- everybody got paper towels but Evan set it up
   5.     Clean plants from all algae by gently rubbing pads of fingers on the leaves and stems- everybody
   6.     Place plants on the damp paper towels and then cover plants with another damp paper towel- everybody place plants on paper towels but Evan covered them up
   7.     Sift through water so that siphon doesn’t get clogged with plant bits- Leah and Tia
   8.     Completely empty one tank of all water through siphoning into bucket and then dump bucket outside- Jorden and Travis
   9.     Siphon water from the other tank into buckets to be placed into the nasty tank and then into the new tank also- Alex, Jorden, Alana
   10.  Push empty table next to the table with the tanks and push empty tanks onto the empty table- Leah, Alex, Evan
   11.  Wipe down table that had the tanks on it- Evan, Leah, Alex, Jorden
   12.  Place the melamine on the table- Leah, Alex
   13.  Put empty tanks back onto the table with the melamine- Leah, Alex
   14.  Then place water in buckets and de-chlorinate it- Leah, Alex
   15.  Place water in tanks- Leah, Alex
   16.  Place plants in tank- Leah, Alex
   Documentation by Alana

Testing

After we constructed our CO2 injector we poured water into a 5 gallon bucket and inserted our tubing into the bucket. We did not immediatly notice that bubbles were being pumped into the bucket so we assumed it hadn't built up enough pressure yet. The following day our bubble count was still very low, we figured out the problem was the check valves were not open enough for the CO2 to flow properly. When the check valves were opened the sudden pressure made the CO2 solution spewed out the airline hose and made a huge mess on the floor.

Construction

We created a list of everything we would need and volunteered to bring in different items, to make things easier we wrote the list on our google doc; which is our homebase for storing information and collaborating.

We used:
1) a 2 liter pop bottle with cap
2) 1 cup of sugar
3) 1 tablespoon of yeast
4) & 6 cups of water
5) Silicon airline tuning
6) Hot glue
7) Pressure valves

To make the solution we had to pour six cups of water into the bottle and add the yeast and sugar. Afterwards we shook the bottle to mix everything together. It took a few hours to build enough pressure to force the gas into the tank. We drilled a hole into the cap and fed the tubing through, we hot glued both sides to keep the gas from leaking and attached the pressure valves to the middle section and end.

This is what it looked like:

Selection

After looking at the sketches we drew the night before 3 designs were chosen for further researching, the next day we made our CO2 injector. =)

 

Development

The next day we had a team discussion about what we researched and what we felt would be the most important for designing our future injector. We all shared our thoughts, which gave us a lot of vantage points to view our experiment through.

For homework everyone had to design their own CO2 system.

Research

In biology class we were assigned prior to beginning our aquarium project to research different CO2 injectors and to compare and contrast homemade injectors vs. store bought ones. We used that research to decide that we liked homemade injectors the most because we felt they work just as well and are cheaper.
  

The Swank Tank

Project Overview:
The Biology class at Metro Early College High School is participating in an aquarium design competition. Our class has been divided up into 3 groups and each group has to research, design, create, and plan how we as a team are going to successfully create a freshwater ecosystem consisting of freshwater fish and plants. We have to document our journey through this project. Our team, The Swank Tank, will be documenting our entire project through this blog. We will include daily pictures of our CO2 Injector system and our tank as it grows as well as the daily chemical levels of the water. We as a team are having a lot of fun with this project and we are really excited to begin to design our tank and see it grow, we hope you are to!