I would say "bloody awesome", but unfortunately that would be a lie.
It's better than that.
Apart from the lag, the only problem I can think of is that it burns too quickly. Maybe you could find some way of introducing a time delay after each contact?
I have read the book and I see what you're trying to do. It's just that it doesn't look very tidy when you have droplets of water spraying everywhere. You should try to make it so that leakages either go somewhere else or are deleted.
It works. Too well sometimes - within about a minute or so I'm facing a population boom. The tanks are nearly completely filled with greyish circles, which causes a lot of lag. I suggest that death, food and competition is added to the simulation both to make it more realistic and to solve this problem.
Have you seen RaRaMalum's Life scenes? They're a perfect example of what I'd like to see here.