I've noticed a huge difference in my fish based on the amount of detritus in the filters. The water can test perfectly as far as no2, no3 and ammonia, but for some reason the mum trapped by my mechanical filtration causes my gatf to go off of his diet. I'm starting to dislike my fx5 because of this; its great at bio but it is a horrendously inconvenient thing to clean.
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The "mum"..... LMAO. I could easily fly off on a rant about the "mum". I personally believe this "mum" to be a huge factor when it comes to loosing rays. I've lost rays for years, I'll openly admit I've lost more then my fair share. I used to run a giant wet/dry on my pond. 3 different filter pads in each tower, a foam pad, a medium pad, and a fine pad. Moderately stocked 700 gallon pond. I'd get bacterial outbreaks at least every 5-6 months. For the first year I thought it was dirty freshly imported rays, but after no new rays were introduced I still had the problem. All water parameters tested perfect, but when I broke down the filter what did I find every time? You guessed it. Mum. I think that the mum isn't necessarily poop, but rather dead bio that can't escape the scrubbies. Who had this problem more then wet/dry users? Canister filter users, which I also used.
A simple dig in the archives will find lots of dead rays, dying in water with perfect parameters, and what do the keepers eventually find? A mucked up mess in the filter.
Fast forward several years and many, many filtration rebuilds...... Since my big tank went up with a pair of reactors handling most of the bio load I haven't found much mum anywhere in the system. I switched to the double sewn 100/200 micron socks that are housed in what I call the mechanical filtration heads which are 55 gallon tanks, that I can easily switch socks in which gets done at least once a week. Guess how many bacterial outbreaks? None. So many coincidences that it's hard to overlook. I don't think scrubbies are good for bio. I don't think pads are good for mechanical. I think the ideal filtration system for our monsters is a radial flow separator, to a bank of 200/100 socks, then to a bank of 100/50 socks. From there to the reactors, then wet/dries, and lastly some ceramic media. The RFS (radial flow separator) is a mind blowing concept. Basically you'd be able to flush solid waste out of the system with the crack of a valve. Similar to a vortex or settling chamber, except a RFS actually works. You could easily do this twice a day. The socks will catch anything above 50 micron. The bio chips in the moving bed take out everything up to 5 micron.
My theory is I have more trouble then most keepers cause my PH is 8.5. Most people can get away with murder compared to what I can get away with cause my fish are already stressed from the liquid rock tap water. IF you have nice acidic soft water then your fish are less stressed from the get go, so you can let the filter go longer, but it seems eventually if left unchecked the mum will eventually harbor some nasty crap, which we see as disease, and treat with meds, when really they're just stressed from the lack of maintenance. Some theorize the mum or whatever is in the mum impacts oxygen content in the water. All I know is I never thought twice about it till I started seeing more and more as the feeding size increased. You guys feeding a hand full of pellets to a tank might not ever see it spiral out of control, but when you're shoveling POUNDS of frozen food along with pellets into a tank it can get crazy quick if not kept under control.
I've always thought there's some important water chemistry number that we need to monitor that our test kits don't. The test kits to test ammo nitrite and nitrate seem almost worthless. Maybe there's some more useful numbers to watch? ORP? Conductivity? TDS? Maybe there's something to the hardnesses?
All I know is the longer I keep fish, the more I think there needs to be more focus on the water. People have and still continue to tell me water doesn't mater, fish adapt to anything, and I'd probably say that too IF I was down in the 6s or even 7 PH wise, but being closer to 9 then 8 I'm guessing that this makes the margin for error with things like mum much, much smaller.
