Wednesday 29 May 2019

A little Bit Of Aquarium Maintenance Today,

at the rear of the aquarium,



there is a piece of kit called a protein skimmer, what it basically does is to draw water down through a column of rising air bubbles, which agitate the water making the proteins, which are a byproduct of fish, food and corals, which are harmful, rise to the surface of the reaction chamber where the liquid can be easily collected,

 bubbles forming at the top of the reaction chamber,

  when protein is present, the action of the bubbles forces the bubbles containing the protein into a funnel, where they overflow into a collecting cup, the protein is the dark liquid at the bottom of the collecting cup above, it is a fine balance to adjust the bubbles, too few and no protein will be collected, too many and you will collect just water,

 which is why there is an overflow tube going back into the aquarium,

 a few photographs, of the aquarium,

 for these,

 I have used only the small UV lights,

 rather like terrestrial plants and trees need sunlight to photosynthesise,

 corals need UV light which is beneficial to the Zooxanthellae that reside in the corals which provide food to them by way of photosynthesis, 

 when the main lights are turned on you can not see the UV light as the spectrum of light that we can see swaps the UV light, 

 them great news, as promised Robbie today called by with 2 one kilowatt radiators, 

 we could have gone with 1 two kilowatt unit,

 but these were heavy enough to manhandle up the loft ladder, 

 pipework going into place,

 the other advantage of having two units is that they can be separated to give a larger heating area, 

at the close of play all of the upstairs plumbing was completed, which was a trial as the boiler in the kitchen above it had a huge wooden beam, that you could not see because of the kitchen ceiling, that the pipework had to navigate around, Robbie will call back tomorrow to complete the job, so one more step towards my manattic completed! just the carpet and furniture to go, after Robbie left and our evening meal it was feet up for two more from the Game of Thrones box and then we were off to bed.


2 comments:

Jil Wrinkle said...

Just out of curiosity, is there any commercial use for the fish protein or other fish life-cycle byproducts? Obviously poop from animals can be used as fertilizer. If you had the protein waste of a million fish, would it be useful in any way?

PattayaStan said...

Dear Jil, I have no idea, but I would guess that there might be a use for waste protein from fish and from us if you can get over the cost of picking it up from commercial installations, say like public swimming pools, and water treatment plants, concentrating the waste protein rich water by evaporation might be a way to cut down on transport costs, but going back to fish on an enclosed fish farm as opposed to one in say a lake or fjord, it may be a possibility, all I do with ours from the fish is throw it away, if we had a garden it might make for a interesting experiment to try it on a few plants with some of the same without the protein waste as a control, but as I said I have no idea about the commercial use of protein from skimmers, best regards, Stan and Diana.