1) Establish container which houses a simple ecosystem that generates toxic ammonia (which is produced by fish waste, excess food, decaying organic matter)

B.O.M.:

• Aquarium setup
  • tank (<5 gallon to start)
  • Water pump
  • Biofilter (“A biological filter will convert toxic ammonia (from your fishes’ waste, excess food, decaying or dying plant mater, and dead fish) into Nitrite, and toxic Nitrite into Nitrate… Nitrate will also contribute to algae growth. Biological filtration occurs as the water passes over any surface that the bacteria processing the waste can grow on.”)
  • Biotic matter
    • Plants TBD
    • Fish? TBD
  • Abiotic matter
    • Rocks, sand, dirt, water…
• Measuring tools:
  • Colorimeter (“to determine the concentration of colored compounds in solution”)
  • Thermomter
  • Test kits (see step 3 below)

2) Use a biofilter to convert ammonia into nitrate

3) Measure nitrate levels with colorimeter; nitrate/ammonia/ph levels mapped to internet speed

Automatic colorimetric aquarium monitors exist and would relay data to computer, but are brand new, expensive, not accessible enough yet:

• https://reefbuilders.com/2015/10/28/colorimeter-testing-finally-ready-breakthrough-aquarium-hobby/#
• https://www.seneye.com/

Manual process:

I spoke to someone who used to own an aquarium with a few different species of fish, and she claimed that maintenance only consisted of changing a filter inside a motorized pump and periodic tank cleaning. In terms of data collection, the following quantifiable elements are possible:

• Salinity/TDS (with TDS meter)
• pH (with pH test kit)
• Oxygen (with oxygen test kit)
• CO2 (with test kit)
• Carbonate Hardness (with test kit)
• Calcium (with test kit)
• Ammonia (test kit)
• Potassium (test kit)
• Temperature (thermometer)

4) Feed data into internet speed visualization

Currently don’t know of a way to gauge my internet speed considering time/money/technical feasibility constraints, so my options are:

• Consider possibilities of browser plugins to map some aspect of web browsing experience to aquarium data
• Feed data into a mock browsing speed visualization, possibly modeled after popular http://www.speedtest.net/ interface:

I can incorporate geographic ecological data and internet submarine cable infrastructure into this visualization.