Open question

[JAWS69]

I was at my nephews birthday party today, and we got talking about my fish tank. He asked me all that was involved, so I told him. He was amazed at the care a fish tank needs. Then he asked me "how do the do it in the wild"? I told him that GOD does the water changes by having it evaporating, then raining. I told him there are plants and other fish along with bugs the fish eat. But he did get me on one. He said "well, waht about PH, and Nitrate levels like you said"? I said yea, why dont we go get something to eat?

I got to give it to the little guy, he is 7, but very smart!!

How does GOD handle the PH and nitrate levels?

 

[UP UP AND GUPPY]

By umm... Hmm... dunno. My neice asked me that ad she was crying when I to9ld rocky horror picture show(Goldfish) died. And she said GOD killed the pH.

 

[YahooFishKeeper]

i would say god puts special things in the environment like drift wood in the river to help with the ph, or corals in the ocean to keep it the same. and all the plants that god grew in the wild use up all the bad nitrates.

 

[UP UP AND GUPPY]

Good point. I second Yahoo.

 

[Stevie]

I dont belive in god. So I would say "he" does not do anything.

 

[Seleya]

Plants use nitrates as fertilizer and the water is constantly being changed (river flow, rain....) so nitrates don't build up, they're washed away. Where nitrates build up through a natural event or human intervention (fertilizer run-off, for example) fish usually die off.

pH is a wee bit different. In some cases, fallen logs and leaves help achieve low pH -- mineral deposits help maintain high pH, however the largest equalizer as far as pH is concerned is evolution -- those who can adapt over thousands of years, thrive, those who cannot, don't. In most cases, we're talking sufficiently large bodies of water such that pH is kept at a reasonably steady number regardess which is very important to the fish in those bodies of water. Simple as that.

The goldfish was in a very small container. Even small goldies need a tank of some size and a very strict water change schedule.

 

[Etheostoma]

It's not so much the pH that's important as it is the buffering that maintains the pH and prevents it from drifting excessively.

Here's how buffering works in streams, more or less: http://www.amrclearinghouse.org/Sub/AMDbasics/ZZbuffering.htm

In any event, water science is not so complex that the answer is "Intelligent Design". Which is a problem I have with that school of thought anyway; if we always chalked it up to I.D. whenever we hit a wall in a research question rather than trying to work through the obstacle, or if we consoled ourselves that we simply cannot understand something because we feel it's too complex, we wouldn't know jack-squat about anything today, including aquarium science, and we'd all be faith-healing our fish.

 

[davidmold]

The point is, the fish evolved to suit their environment, which has whatever pH it has because of the local geology plus the chemical processes going on in the water. Because fresh rain feeds the flowing waters where most of these fish live, nitrates get washed away. And where that doesn't happen, the fish have evolved to tolerate more nitrate.

Whether you choose to say God is involved or not is of course down to your personal tastes. Either way the processes are the same.

The reason an aquarist's life is complicated is just the difference between natural bodies of water and a tank in your house. If fish had evolved in tanks, there would be no problem.

 

[Etheostoma]

Nitrates get used, sequestered or transported, rainwater is naturally acidic contributing to geoprocesses that influence water chemistry (especially pH), green plants have their own influence beyond diel fluctuations in dissolved oxygen and nutrient re-uptake, and then you throw in the food web, or, as I like to call it; the Trophic Cascade.

When you take a larger system and try to mimic it with a smaller volume, you reduce the margine for error. If fish had their origin in fishbowls, we'd all be talking Betta.

 

[NoDeltaH2O]

I'm glad we agree on at least one point Jaws.

As stated before, God's natural system provides for clean clear healthy water. Plants use nitrates, phosphates, carbon, minerals, etc. Of interesting note is the low carbon dioxide level in most all bodies of water, yet the plants thrive. This is due to carbon that is usually in the soil in rich quantities. If we could create carbon rich soils in our tanks, we could throw all of our CO2 units away for good.

I like to explain to people how my tank works as well, and always throw in the part about how water should not need to be changed in a tank if we just mimic God's natural intent (ie, plants).

 

[GeraldTheMouse]

It would be funny if all of a sudden the PH and nitrate level changed drastically in the wild. Bye-Bye fishies.