File:Aquatic life (1916-1917) (19560494409).jpg

Title: Aquatic life
Identifier: aquaticlife219161917baus (find matches)
Year: 1916-1917 (1910s)
Authors: Bausman, Joseph E
Subjects: Aquariums; Fish culture
Publisher: Philadelphia : J. E. Bausman
Contributing Library: Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library

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Text Appearing Before Image:
niie Aquarium and Its Care JOHN LEE BENKflNGTOM
Text Appearing After Image:
PLANTS DOMINATE THIS SPLENDID AQUARIUM Photograph by George H. Seip The success of a self-sustaining aqua- rium (a better term than "balanced") depends upon the luxuriance of its plants. It is many years, more than fifty, since the discovery was made that plants under the influence of light give oil oxy- gen. It is this process that makes the aquarium possible. Like the land ani- mals, fishes breathe. The impure blood, heavily laden with the waste products of the body, is pumped to the minute veins of the gills, there coming in contact with the oxygen in the water, the waste being oxydized and cast oft' as carbin dioxide. The plants then take hold of this com- pound, break it up, retain the carbon which they need for building new tissue, and pass the oxygen back into the water; thus the oxygen practically acts as a car- rier of carbon from the fishes to the plants. Plants breathe, too, of course, but the amount of oxygen they consume is comparatively small in relation to the cjuantity given oft' in tissue-building. From the foregoing it will be understood that an aquarium will be self-sustaining just as long as the supply of oxygen from the plants is sufficient to meet the needs of the animal inmates. The old term "balanced acjuarium" was wrong, in that it inferred that a state of equilibrium ex- isted between the plants and fishes; if such was really the case the balance would be continually hovering between success and failure. This close correla- tion of the needs of the two forms of life cannot pertain. The plants must domi- nate in the tank, and must at all times be liberating more oxygen than the fishes will consume. If more than the water is able to retain, and the power varies with the temperature, it will be passed oft' into the atmosphere. Not so, however, the carbon dioxide. This is a heavier gas than oxygen, and more easily retained by the water. As has already been explained, the real foundation on which the little water

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