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Introduction
1.1 Self-Cleaning Fish Tanks
Look into a freshwater aquarium and you will almost always see air bubbles
coursing through the water from the bottom of the tank to the top. To the
non-specialist these might appear to perform merely an oxygenation role,
which, of course, is essential for piscine life. However, there is often, but not
always, another function that helps to clear the water of detritus originating
from sh and aquatic plants. Such units are known as “protein skimmers.”
The function of protein skimmers is fully described by Escobal (2000)
but for the purposes of this introduction, a brief qualitative description of
a t ...