Tropical Fish Keeping

[mattbond]

i have an english oral exam have have to prepare where i have to speak for 10 minutes on a chosen subject
i have chosen tropical fish keeping

does anyone have any idea about compressing our hobby into 10 minutes of speech?

 

[Truck]

explain how filter bacteria work

 

[minxfishy]

Yeah go thru how to fishless cycle a tank, the nitrogen cycle and your done. By which point most people would have stopped listening anyway

 

[rdd1952]

I agree. You could easily spend 10 minutes speaking on the nitrogen cycle, how it works and how it affects our aquariums.

 

[mattbond]

dont i need to mention "fish" as well lol?

any thoughts would be great!

 

[rdd1952]

You can speak on how it helps create a safe environment for fish. How the process breaks down harmful toxins in ammonia and nitite into harmless nitrate.

If you want to stay more with fishkeeping in general, you could briefly cover the most important things such as cycling, water changes, feeding, diseases, algae, etc. The things we deal with very day in providing our fish and inverts with a proper place to live.

 

[saz326]

I recon you might get more interest and thus more recognition if you were to talk about something a bit less "scientific"

How about talking about a few of your favourite fish, where they originate from, what their natural habitats are and how you can re-create the habitats in an aquarium. Maybe your favourites are also getting rare in the wild. Or are sourced from their natural environment rather than being bread within the hobby.

There is plenty to talk about. Just remember that you will get better points in an English aural if you use a few more complicated words, and streatch out defintions, e.g. instead of just saying "Neon tetra", say "the small and delicate looking blue neon tetra, with its short fins and tendency to shoal". .... you get the idea.

 

[lordofthesea]

I did mine on cruelty and the ethical treatment of goldfish. i did a slideshow to go with. it there was loads of stuff on the net.
'Art' (fish in blenders - disgusting isn't it. the guy got away with it to! )
goldfish as fair prizes, good stuff about a government bill refusing to ban it, and of couse the always unpopular(here that is unfortunately not in hte rest of the world )
then you could talk about how to properly treat them, how big they can get, laws other countries have for protecting them, make up some statistics - they always love that in english, use rule of three, alliteration, all that jazz....

No offence meant to everyone else but its way better than the nitrogen cycle. it's really emotive and they look for that in an english speech. also nitrogen and bacteria aren't likely to hold the audiences attention - another thing they look for.

Unlikely though it may sound (it doesn't matter if you don't keep goldfish or never have - theres tonnes of stuff on google) it really does work. I got 20/20 on my english oral for it. Its a sure A*!!!!

 

[shroob]

I'd just talk about the area of fishkeeping that interests you, that way you will show more enthusiasm. I remember doing my oral exam on Green Day (had to talk about a band - wish it had been fishkeeping ).

What fish do you keep? You could talk about them.

 

[OldMan47]

You could spend some time on the problem of releasing fish into the wild and the problems that have already been caused by people like governments releasing certain fish to control mosquitoes and what that has done to native populations. There a loads of examples of environments being devastated by such actions of well meaning people.

 

[pica_nuttalli]

I'd definitely do "A History of Goldfish" explaining where they come from, how big they get, why they die so fast in bowls, that all the types are the same species, etc.

Goldfish are easily the most familiar to the general populace, but people know so little about them!

 

[Darkerwhite2]

I'd definitely do "A History of Goldfish" explaining where they come from, how big they get, why they die so fast in bowls, that all the types are the same species, etc.

Goldfish are easily the most familiar to the general populace, but people know so little about them!

I like that ^ I did an oral presentation on fish keeping and tried to do a general keeping topic... Bad idea was a total wash