Yup you will only have as much BB in the tank to support the current bioload. Increase the bioload and the BB will also increase, decrease it and it will decrease the BB. That's what I want to try with my tank, it's only got a single fish, so I doubt my Eheim 2217 will need all that bio. I'm going to cut down the bio slowly until I have the right amount and just fill the space with mechanical media. Hears another question, since I poop vac on a daily basis I'm removing the "food" for the BB right? So let's say if I'm really busy or if I get sick for a few days
and don't poop vac, will I go through a mini cycle?
Sent from my iPhone using
MonsterAquariaNetwork app
Hello; My reasoning is that the population of bb varies all the time forcircumstances that you describe and other things. A swag (scientific wild --- guess) on my part is that when these things happen in a mature tank the population of bb is spread over many surfaces of the tank and is able to recover very quickly. From my student microbiology class days in the 1960's, I seem to recall that a single bacterium can, in theory, grow to a mass of bacteria the size of the earth in 24 hours if conditions could be kept ideal. This does not happen for many reasons and most colonies we cultured grew to the size of coins in the petre dishes.
Aside from the obivious food restriction that limits the size of a colony, one of the other limits to colony growth is the need to rid waste products from each bacterium. In a petre dish there was essentially always much more food available to the bacteria colonies when they stopped expanding and reached a terminal size. Picture a city without any way to remove the sewage and garbage of each person living in it.
If I recall correctly the initial colony would basically grow to some maximum size and stop. There were often other daughter colonies formed on other spots in a dish from spores and such. These new colonies would grow to some maximum size and stop.
I suspect that this sort of thing happens in an established tank. If the bioload remains constant for a time a balance will be reached in the total number of bb that is supported. I suspect that new daughter colonies are formed all the time as the old colonies become poluted and decline in numbers.
I also suspect that the variations in bioload that happen over time are adjusted to fairly quickly. There should be thousands of bb colonies on many surfaces of the tank that can utilize the increase in ammonia from new fish, extra feedings, fish deaths and the like. That said, I feel that a big enough quick change in ammonia production may lead to a min cycle to some degree. This is one sound argument for understocking a tank with fish and for not making drastic changes in fish populations.
I like to have a lot of plants and snails in a tank and have over the years gone to lower density fish populations. I suspect that the biomass of plants and snails may be greater than that of the fish in my tanks for the most part.
When removing a lot of fish from a tank it seems to me that this is likely less of a stress as the bb that can on longer find eough ammonia to utilize die off and their decay produces some ammonia and the process gradually winds down.
One final comment before submitting my thoughts to constructive critique about where the bb are found in a tank. It makes sense that a lot of the bb colonies will be in the filter media due to the constant flow and thus have access to the ammonia. It does seem to me to be possible that the often much larger surface area of the tank, plants , decor and such can have as large or larger population. Does anyone know of a properly conducted study on this or have we developed folklore based on assumptions? It would seem that anywhere the flow touches surfaces in a tank that there can be ample bb as these surfaces are close to where the fish and decay products are.
