Okavango Challenge

Hi.I am currently working a project that needs us to come out with ideas to improve water quality.
Hence,i need opinions that are creative and workable to improve water quality that will then improve the quality of people’s life too.

I don’t know specifically how to improve water quality, but I do know that if you don’t get the people your trying to help to buy into the idea no matter what you try to do won’t work. So what plan you enact must include a lot of education.

We have all the probes to check for water quality.
We have decided to use the probes to test for the water quality in different parts of Singapore and different levels in the HDB flats to see if there is any difference in the water quality.
This would be the idea of our project but how can we link it to benefiting the society and saving the environment?
Or is there any other ideas that we can do about water management with all the probes we have ?

Pauline, I assume that the connection to the environment and benefiting society is a funding issue without which the scheme could not progress. An argument for linking to the environment could be that if the Water was good quality, the users would be less likely to ‘run the tap’ before drawing drinking water, this would reduce waste of fresh water and reduce the need to process the waste. From the society angle, perhaps society would benefit from reduced water charges (meter charges) because they no longer ‘run the tap’ and the water saved would be available to other members of society who may be without running water at present.

I will be testing the effects of different types of water (storm runoff, tap water, filtered water, grey water) on plants, and I need to know what’s a good plant that grows fast and that I will be readily able to notice differences in if it is unhealthy, etc.

duckweed (Lemna sp.) and Elodea (also called Anacharis)

You can get both in most pet stores, you get multiple plants of each (a container of small floating plants in the case of duckweed, a grouping of stems for the Elodea) and they’re relatively cheap (either would be less than $5-6)

I need to find out somewhere I could buy a water quality test kit around Cheltenham or Philadelphia. I don’t want to buy offline.

Please no idk comments or comments that don’t answer my question.
No, this is not for a pool. It’s for science. And no, I don’t mean pH level strips.

You can buy a water quality test kit from http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&keywords=water%20quality%20test%20kit%20&tag=189-20&index=blended&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325

Especially in a ten gallon tank. I’m a veteran in fresh water fish tanks. I would like to have a ten gallon reef tank only and would greatly appreciate any additional infomation.

you should do %25 water changes every 3 days to maintain water quality in that small tank.

We are to make a project of some significance to water quality, in which we have to describe the cause and effects of the issue. We must also have a topic that allows students to do something to fix/resolve this issue. Any good ideas people? Best idea gets 5stars!
It is a research project, not an experiment.

If you have public areas that are used for swimming, you could create testing for presence of E. coli. This information could be tracked and anaylzed; What is it? when does it appear? how long does it take for levels to become acceptable? Further, you could expand your project to include other types of simming ailments (swimmer’s itch; ear infections; etc).

The world is experiencing a scarcity of water.
Africa,especially,does not get enough drinking water because there is lack of water supply and they are too poor to sanitize the water.
Is there any means whereby we can add something to the water or any simple system that can reduce cost of sanitation by sanitizing seawater or rainwater to get drinking water ?

There are a number of people working on the problem of finding ways to make cheap, clean, drinking water available to more people. Depending on what specifically the problem is in your water, the solution is a bit different. As far as something you add, potassium permanganate has traditionally been used to disinfect water (though it can leave it with a pink color). There are some microfilters that have been developed that can take dirty water and render it free of bacteria, etc. Examples would be the LifeStraw or the Life Saver Bottle.

For sea water the big issue is going to be removing the salt, and doing that will require either distillation or some other sort of separation (like reverse osmosis). In most places rainwater is generally clean and drinkable, the issue is just finding a way to capture it.

My son has two fish in a smallish tank, I do not overfeed them, have put in a new filter and carry out regular weekly partial water changes yet the water is always deep yellow in colour, why? The fish seem to be ok but it doesnt look attractive and cant be doing them much good. My son does have a night light and the tank is in his room, could it be too much light? Can any body help?

For the record, her son is not peeing in the tank. Urine contains mostly salt, which in itself would likely kill the fish. Furthermore, it contains a high level of ammonia, which would also kill the fish. Although I have heard of advanced aquarists using urine as a cheap (but effective) fertilizer in heavily planted tanks because of its high nitrogen content, that is clearly not the problem in her case because without plants to absorb it it would kill the fish long before it left such a distinctive colour.
In addition to the protein answer, which is plausable, your problem could stem from tannins in the water. Do you have any driftwood in the tank? The gravel could be releasing tannins too, you must always be sure that the package says "does not stain aquarium water."
Once again, the best way to remove tannins is to add carbon to the filter! Even if you already have it, it needs to be replaced every two weeks or so, because it gets clogged fast and is quickly rendered useless.
Bon Chance!
Liszie

And on a hike, what would you look for in your drinking water to ensure safety?

Entamoeba Histolytica, an over population of Algae, Various species of diatoms are also widely used as indicator species of clean or polluted water.Other specific organism can be found at the following site:

I just got some ferns with baby snails all over it. Will it help improve the water of the tank?
I don’t think there will be that many snails, my gold fish is eating them.

Plants will do very good for the water quality of a fresh water aquarium if done in the right way. That is you must give about 16 hours of light and 8 hours of darkness to the plants so they will grow. When plants grow, they release oxygen into the water naturally. So if you want plants to grow, do not introduce oxygen into the water as this will stunt their growth.
Snails are just like fish in that they release by-products into the water that if not filtered will eventually foul up the water. Snails are good however for cleaning algae from the plants and glass. If you get overrun with snails, you may have to buy a puffer fish to clean them out