While in school, I sat through many chemistry lectures. I hated chem but it was the required minor for anyone in the Marine Biology program at Whitewater. I struggled through introducation chemistry, organic chemistry, water quality...ugh the list goes on. I often wondered during these lectures if I would EVER EVER use this knowledge in the "real world."
At the Audubon Center, we have 400 gallons of freshwater fish - trout, bluegills, bass, etc. Recently, we have been having problems with the trout dying. I run water quality a couple times a week but it keeps coming back clean. After a few emails to the Great Lakes Aquarium, they recommended that we treat with salt (5ppt) since we may have a parasite problem.
Heres me showing off my titration skills to figure out DO...I am a dork!
This is where the chem classes come in - I had to figure out how many pounds of salt to add to the 400 gallons of water to get 5 ppt. The salt concentration needs to be high enough to kill the parasites but low enough to not harm the fish. After more than a half hour of research and calculations, I came up with adding 18 pounds of salt!! That is ALOT of salt, so much so that I thought my calculations were wrong. I shot another email off to the aquarium. Turns out my calculations were right - add about 20 pounds of salt.
Glad to know that all of those classes paid off, even if its only a little bit. :)
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