It seems some don't feel biological media is as necessary as made out to be or that it might not even be necessary at all. I've thought about this and the following questions came to mind. I'm not sure if I'm on track or not but hopefully I can get some answers to some of my questions or at the very least get some input.
Let's say you decide to use no bio media for your tank. Let's say you decide to use a bare bottom setup so its easier to keep clean. Basically at this point you have no decorations or substrate so your relying on the walls and bottom of the tank to house bacteria. You have a power head in the tank for circulation and your stocked properly.
Now given these circumstances, let's say algae begins to grow on the bottom and sides of the tank after a successful cycle. The questions are:
Does the algae snuff out the biological bacteria on the surfaces of the tank?
Does the algae do a better or a worse job than the biological bacteria in the nitrification cycle?
If the algae layers itself and starts to die producing ammonia would the system handle the added load? Or would you have to constantly keep the algae in check so that doesn't happen?
If the algae does snuff out the biological bacteria and every time you perform a water change, before you change the water you scrape all the algae off of the sides of the tank so it's cleaned up during the water change do you have to go through another cycle every time?
I'm just curious as to what role algae would play in this scenario. Because if algae can disrupt biological bacteria or even out compete it for nutrients then I'm leaning towards biological media as kind of a safe house for biological bacteria being somewhat necessary to prevent these possibilities from happening.
I understand that biological media never existed at one point and things worked out just fine but the way I see it cars never had seat belts at one point and things worked out just fine too until a wreck. I'm starting to feel like bio media is the seat belt in our fish keeping equation and that even though it might not be absolutely necessary your still better off using it.
Let's say you decide to use no bio media for your tank. Let's say you decide to use a bare bottom setup so its easier to keep clean. Basically at this point you have no decorations or substrate so your relying on the walls and bottom of the tank to house bacteria. You have a power head in the tank for circulation and your stocked properly.
Now given these circumstances, let's say algae begins to grow on the bottom and sides of the tank after a successful cycle. The questions are:
Does the algae snuff out the biological bacteria on the surfaces of the tank?
Does the algae do a better or a worse job than the biological bacteria in the nitrification cycle?
If the algae layers itself and starts to die producing ammonia would the system handle the added load? Or would you have to constantly keep the algae in check so that doesn't happen?
If the algae does snuff out the biological bacteria and every time you perform a water change, before you change the water you scrape all the algae off of the sides of the tank so it's cleaned up during the water change do you have to go through another cycle every time?
I'm just curious as to what role algae would play in this scenario. Because if algae can disrupt biological bacteria or even out compete it for nutrients then I'm leaning towards biological media as kind of a safe house for biological bacteria being somewhat necessary to prevent these possibilities from happening.
I understand that biological media never existed at one point and things worked out just fine but the way I see it cars never had seat belts at one point and things worked out just fine too until a wreck. I'm starting to feel like bio media is the seat belt in our fish keeping equation and that even though it might not be absolutely necessary your still better off using it.
