Fishkeeper Fry Week 5
The children have loved every minute of the Fishkeeper Fry programme so far.
In week 5, it was time to change the water. Every so often, it is extremely important to change the water in the aquarium. This is because the levels of bad bacteria can start to harm the fish and the levels of good bacteria can diminish meaning that the levels of nitrite can increase and this is toxic to the fish.
Firstly we tested the gravel cleaner in a separate bucket, we did this because we wanted to make sure that we were using the gravel cleaner correctly and that we didn’t frighten or stress the fish when trying the cleaner for the first time. We loved cleaning the gravel, the children were amazed to see the colour of the water which had been removed!
Once we removed around 10-15L of water from our fish tank, it was time to put the water back in. The children very quickly stopped me from putting tap water back into the tank. They said that I couldn’t do it as it would harm the fish even more! From then, we had a discussion of what we needed to do in order for the fish to be healthy and how to do this. They told me that we had to fill the bucket up with clean tap water, but before putting it into the tank we needed to add some tap water conditioner. This was to make sure that the correct levels of ammonia, nitrites, nitrates and PH were correct before adding this to the tank.
We also had to add the Plant Gro solution to ensure our plants are healthy too.
Once we had cleaned our tank and let the new water settle and flow round the tank, it was then time to introduce our new arrivals. This week, the children added Nerite Snails. The adults and children were very excited about this. This is the first time that anyone has had snails in their fish tank. The snails were introduced to the tank the same way the other types of fish have been added. The Nerite Snails that we have in our tank are a Zebra Nerite Snail and a Gold Inca Nerite Snail. The children love watching these move at a pace around the aquarium.
