Nitrogen Cycle Update

I know that everyone reading this is on the edge of their seat, wondering how my office aquarium's nitrogen cycle is going on. So here it is.

Sometime between Monday at 7:30 PM and Tuesday at 11:30 AM the nitrite (NO2) levels in my tank went wild. From 0 PPM to over 3 PPM. This means the water is probably still toxic to the fish I plan to keep.

But the GOOD news is that there is a reason for this jump. You see, the ammonia levels fell like a brick. The bacteria that turn ammonia into nitrite are doing their job. Once the nitrite to nitrate bacteria get established, the nitrite levels will rapidly fall to zero, and the nitrate level will spike. Then I will do a water change and add the cardinal tetras. Pretty simple huh?

So there we go. Aint science fun? I think it is. And that is the kind of scary thing. For me, the workings of bacteria constitutes fun. I can sit and watch bacteria work (using chemical test kits) all day - while I am supposed to be working. I would make an awesome supervisor, because I can sit back and watch ANYTHING work all day - as long as that thing I am watching is not myself in a mirror.

And this is EXACTLY what a supervisor does. They sit back and watch YOU work, while doing nothing except drink coffee and tell you that you are doing your job wrong. I could do that. Except I would drink less coffee and more tea. Coffee really is not my thing.

Not that I just go to work to fiddle with test kits. I test the water in my tank before my shift starts, and then test again after I clock out. If you are the bacteria supervisor, you can have another job on the side. Even a full time job that comes with a bi-weekly paycheck. Bacteria are amazingly self directed and self motivated - they require very little supervision. And this is a good thing, because the pay for a bacteria supervisor is horrible. Without the job on the side, I would be up the creek without a paddle. And without all the cool stuff I have managed to piss my money away on. Speaking of which, I bought a 1 gig SD card for my new PDA. The PDA already had 4 gigs internal memory. But I needed that SD card. I put a bunch of MP3 files and even some cool old music videos on the card.