The scientific world is never short on impressing us on their wonderful experiments and tricks on finding new information about our human race. One of the things that people with fish tanks will know and use are dissolved oxygen analysers. These measure the amount of dissolved oxygen in liquid and are typically measured in PPM (parts per million). Dissolved oxygen is a process that can happen in fish tanks, which very often can be as a result of algae formation.



A dissolved oxygen analyser can help how much saturated oxygen is in the liquid and help determine how to resolve the problem. Often this can cause harm to humans taking part in diving, resulting in decompression sickness (something divers can commonly suffer from due to a decreased amount of body pressure). Water quality in a fish tank is an extremely important part of keeping fishes safe, but it is also just as important to make sure that there maintains some levels of oxygen dissolving to preserve the nature life in water, because they are kept in an artificial environment.

In addition a Dissolved oxygen analyser can help to measure the water quality and to determine the level of which the oxygen has dissolved in the water. The amount water held by the water is dependent on various factors of the water; this can be in the form of a specific temperature, water pressure and salinity. Gas solubility increase when the water temperature decreases, the same applies to when salinity decreases. More oxygen can be held in cold water, the same applies to freshwater as saltwater cannot hold enough oxygen.

These devices are commonly used for divers in deep sea diving, to enable them to calculate the water pressure and oxygen tank levels needed. These are also used in a lab whereby the analysts can determine the quality of the water before using it on experiments. Dissolved oxygen levels are generally measured in environmental analysis of major river flows and estuaries. All living organisms are dependent on dissolved oxygen levels; however healthy rivers also depend on oxygen levels in the water.

Organic matter can remove oxygen levels; this process is known as aerobic decay. Different fishes can live on varied oxygen levels, for example salmon fish can only live on highly saturated areas, whereas tench and carp are more resistant and can survive on an even tighter level of oxygen supply. Even when no oxygen supply is available in the water, organic matter will still be broken down, in which this process is called anaerobic decay.

It comes as no surprise that external actions can impact the oxygen levels in the river, hence the importance of keeping up to date with the quality of the water using the handy dissolved oxygen analysers. Any unusual or foreign materials present could deplete the oxygen levels, which is why environmentalists take action to even out the levels again.