Spiritual_Jaguar4685 t1_ja9jfxy wrote
Fertilizer is basically "small creature food" and the algae and other micro-organisms eat it up and grow like crazy, sucking up all the oxygen from the water because they need to breathe too. They call this effect a "bloom", so the missing piece for you is the algae, they eat the food, they grow like crazy, they breathe up all the water-oxygen, everything else dies..
finn_enviro89 t1_ja9sz6h wrote
Also, when the algae die, they’re eaten by decomposers, which take in a ton of oxygen, causing more things to die, causing more decomposers to thrive…
Veritas3333 t1_jaanasq wrote
To help clear up some confusion, what gets used up is "Dissolved Oxygen", which is oxygen that's in the water, that fish and plants need to survive. Fish and plants aren't separating the hydrogen and the oxygen in the water molecules, they're using the dissolved oxygen suspended in the water.
Some ways to aerate water are fountains, bubblers, or in the case of flowing water you just put a bunch of rocks in the water to create rapids, also called riffles.
Psychological-Dog994 OP t1_ja9kopn wrote
How does water gain dissolved oxygen does it come from photosynthesis?
Spiritual_Jaguar4685 t1_ja9lnyy wrote
A liquid will absorb a portion of any gas it's exposed to, for example water on Earth will absorb gases from the air above it. It's just a natural process called "Boyle's Law", something we've learned from physics and chemistry.
The amount of overall gases a liquid absorbs is complicated, but has to do with pressure (for example, this is why soda and beer bubble like crazy when you open them, because you're removing the pressure in the can and the beer can't hold that much gas at room pressure) and the proportion of the gases dissolved is the same as the proportion of the gases in the air (again, using beer as our example, this is why carbonated beers are so bubbly but only for a short time [lots of CO2 in the beer, barely any in the air, hence it all wants to come out quickly] and why nitrogenated beers like Guinness don't bubble as much and stay bubbly for so long [lots of nitrogen in the, but also lots of nitrogen in the air, it doesn't have any place to go])
Fat_Doinks408 t1_jaacbqb wrote
This is why i f*cken love reddit!! Learn something new everytime!
BudoftheBeat t1_jaav4ay wrote
Right? Like it's osmosis but for gases using liquid as the membrane
TheRichTurner t1_jaahyry wrote
Boyle's law: 'The absolute pressure exerted by a given mass of an ideal gas is inversely proportional to the volume it occupies if the temperature and amount of gas remain unchanged within a closed system.'
Boyle's law has nothing to do with water absorbing gasses.
Mvpeh t1_jaarxiu wrote
Classic reddit moment
ThepunfishersGun t1_jabiieu wrote
Henry's Law (I believe, been awhile since college/grad school) partial pressure of dissolved gas in liquid is proportional to partial pressure of undissolved gas. IIRC, it goes: p1/a1 = p2/a2 where one side of the equation describes gas dissolved at a given atmospheric pressure and the other side describes gas dissolved at a changed atmospheric pressure.
Revenge_of_the_User t1_jaaesjn wrote
The astronaut everyone loves, cant remember his name, demonstrated this not too long ago by being pretty deep below water level where the pressure is just...much greater than on a beach.
He shook a soda pretty vigorously, and then cracked it. Since the pressure was so high down there, the pop only slightly fizzed.
This is also why deep divers have to surface slowly, or spend time in a hyperbaric (pressure) chamber if the need to surface quickly. The nitrogen gas in their blood/tissue expands as they go up, and needs to be done slowly or you get "the bends". Think meat balloon on a cellular level. Can be fatal, or cause life long problems. One guys body swelled up like crazy after an emergency deep dive surfacing (lost his air hose) and survived; though the hyperbaric chamber didnt really help him like it can others - he stayed unfortunately very swollen. But at least he didnt die. The bends are very painful, im told.
All because of gasses in liquids at varying pressures.
BaconIsAVeg2 t1_jaaipsl wrote
> It's just a natural process called "Boyle's Law", something we've learned from physics and chemistry.
Example of it in action here.
paid2fish t1_jaapief wrote
Also, the amount of o2 that water can absorb is significantly affected by water temperature. Colder water holds more o2
Mvpeh t1_jaarwus wrote
Boyle’s law doesn’t apply here.
Moveover, Nitrogen is less soluble than CO2 in H2O, and equilibrates quicker.
breckenridgeback t1_ja9o92e wrote
Ultimately, yes: all of Earth's atmospheric oxygen is from photosynthesis. But in the more local sense, it's just dissolved into the water from the air around it.
zaphrous t1_ja9w9d2 wrote
You can aerate water. This happens naturally where air meets water. You can do it more quickly by spraying the water in the air like a fountain. So a fountain can keep pond fish alive. Or you can use a pump to make bubbles underwater. So probably a waterfall would be the best natural way to get oxygen back into the water, but rough waters would also work well.
takemybomb t1_jaabvkh wrote
Algae isn't creating oxygen as a process though? or there many type of algae.
Revenge_of_the_User t1_jaafa0m wrote
Its misworded; the issue is that when the agae dies, the decomposition process eats up the oxygen....and as stated somewhere above, causes more stuff to die, causing more decomposition, causing less oxygen and more death......its pretty concerning honestly. There are pockets of no oxygen moving around in the ocean that just suffocate things.
pleasegivemealife t1_jaalivb wrote
Just add bubbles maker like those aquariums! Problem solved. Jk
thesquirrelhorde t1_jabtjte wrote
Nope, that just encourages more algal growth. It’s the high nutrient levels that are the problem.
pleasegivemealife t1_jac0ns8 wrote
It's just a joke, but yes I believe the solution is more complicated than that
thesquirrelhorde t1_jac18h9 wrote
No worries, I mentioned it as adding bubblers/fountains tends to be the go to solution for the well meaning but uniformed. I get why people do it, it seems logical. But it’s another example of why common sense is not always the right answer.
A much better solution (after reducing the nutrient input that is) is to increase the number of large aquatic plants (macrophytes). These take up the nutrients which suppresses the algae growth.
Due_Individual_6955 t1_jabmuj4 wrote
But also we do do this. Hehe do do.
Dalemaunder t1_jabmer4 wrote
Damn, nature. You scary.
Durris t1_jaad6hq wrote
Algae doesn't "breathe up all the water-oxygen" though.
Book_Sea t1_jabg3u5 wrote
Algae doesn’t breathe up all the water oxygen. They are plants. It is the decomposers who eat all these small creatures who use the oxygen.
Barneyk t1_jabjez6 wrote
>so the missing piece for you is the algae, they eat the food, they grow like crazy, they breathe up all the water-oxygen, everything else dies..
This is worded so badly.
Algae are plants that produce oxygen, they don't breathe it up.
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