Why does everyone overdo the bio?

[Bderick67]

Damaged or lost? Please explain how the colony could be damaged or lost.

Power failure, pH crash, overdosed with chlorine not these would/could likely kill the entire colony.

But how about a single filter malfunction or operator error during a cleaning, likely these would only kill of the localize colony. The remaining health colony would then expand to resolve.

 

[Toby_H]

Notice how when I want to bring in points made elsewhere I go get the quote and repost it ;-)
　
Post 148 here : http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=264851&page=15
　

Here's one of my experiences. My son had a 65g tank with a peguin 350 bio wheel filter. This was during a phase were I tested water params before and after every water change. So my son wanted pirahna and found someone giving away 4x 6"ers on craigslist. These turned out to be pacu, but we took them anyway and fed them pellets twice a day. For 3 months he kept the pacu and the peguin filter and 50% w/cs kept ammonia and nitrite levels at zero.
　
We then found someone selling 3x 5-6" Red belly pirahna. We bought them and gave away the 4x 8" pacu. After about a month of having the pirahna the levels of ammonia, then nitrites would show up the next day after feedings. The RBPs being fed shrimp or fish fillets every 3 days. I added a nice little established 55g rated wet/dry to the tank and no more issues.

　
And you honestly believe your son went from happily feeding his Pacu pellets twice a day to not ever feeding the Piraha?...
　
My explaination is that your son overfed the tank occasinoally... and due to the inconsistent overfeedings you saw ammonia spikes...
　
When your son saw you putting the new filter on it, he got worried he would get busted messing up dads tank and he stopped...

 

[Bderick67]

Notice how when I want to bring in points made elsewhere I go get the quote and repost it ;-)
　
Post 148 here : http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=264851&page=15
　

　
And you honestly believe your son went from happily feeding his Pacu pellets twice a day to not ever feeding the Piraha?...
　
My explaination is that your son overfed the tank occasinoally... and due to the inconsistent overfeedings you saw ammonia spikes...
　
When your son saw you putting the new filter on it, he got worried he would get busted messing up dads tank and he stopped...

Again post 148 leads to your assumption. Through research and asking questions we decided the best feeding schedule was once every 3 days. Actually as I remember the RBPs would not even eat if more feedings were added.

But hey assume away.

 

[Jgray152]

Power failure, pH crash, overdosed with chlorine not these would/could likely kill the entire colony.

Exactly. having more bio media to allow the bb colony to spread out will not help in this situation.

But how about a single filter malfunction or operator error during a cleaning, likely these would only kill of the localize colony. The remaining health colony would then expand to resolve.

Localized colony in that specific filter that malfunctions, yes. Where would the healthy colony be?

(Just my opinion below)
I really don't like those penguin filters. I bet adding any other type of bio filtration with around 3-5 liters of media could have done the job just fine. A 55 gallon wet/dry on a 65 gallon tank is a little much personally. The water is VERY little contact time with those bio wheels. I do not believe in them at all. I think they are junk as you found out.

I believe there is a point that is excessive.
I believe you can have good bio filtration within the aquarium.
I believe more that its better to have external bio filtration without going over board.

 

[Toby_H]

Again post 148 leads to your assumption. Through research and asking questions we decided the best feeding schedule was once every 3 days. Actually as I remember the RBPs would not even eat if more feedings were added.

But hey assume away.

Which makes even more sense... your son was putting food in the tank wanting to see the piranhas do what piranhas are supposed to do... but they didn't do anything... so the food just sat and rotted causing the ammonia spike you couldn't figure out...

By the time you added the Wet/Dry he gave up on the piranhas behaving the way he thought they were supposed to...



Cause most young boys want piranhas so they can feed them modestly once every 3 days... lol, and you say I'm making false assumptions... lol

 

[cvermeulen]

Thanks bderick for finally posting some relevant experience, although I have to wonder why it took you so long to provide.

While there are some other explanations for what you were seeing, it does appear as though your biological filtration was having a hard time keeping up. However, you haven't really included any details on how the spikes were measured and how large they were.

From what you said about the piranha's eating habits, it seems to me that such a stock, and their eating habits would result in quite large, periodic ammonia loads. Perhaps in this situation the biological demand is quite a bit higher than in some of the rest of our experiences, and a simple HOB was not enough.

However if we back up to the beginning of this thread and talk about the point we started with, you still did not require a ridiculous amount of biofiltration. a small W/D (while larger than what we were just batting around) seems a reasonable amount of bio-filtration, and in this case perhaps it was what you needed. You still didn't need a big-ass bio tower and 10x filtration turnover though, even with large messy carnivores who only eat periodically.

 

[greenterra]

　
　
If this were true as simply as you present it… then you could take all of the fish and the filter(s) from a mature tank… and place it in/on a brand new tank… and you wouldn’t experience anything more than a very small mini cycle…
　
Which I have done personally and had just as much of a “mini cycle” as I would have expected to have if I replaced the old filters media with all new media…
　
　
While I agree/understand that a large portion of bacteria lives in the filter… it is not true to think that this is the only place it can/will/does live/thrive.

To give some food for thought here. I have just done this with my filtration and stock into my recently completed 800g. I have experienced no registrable ammonia or nitrite at all in the process.
However, I have the dovii back in the 180 with new filters but it still has all the original substrate and decor supporting BB in the tank to keep the tank going. Especially taking into account that the stock level has dropped from many to just 1 fish in this tank now. At least one would hope but it has been this tank I have have experienced a mini cycle in. So much so that I have swapped out some of the media and replaced it with some of the previous media from one of the other filters and things are back to normal.
Now I am not saying that this is not unexpected and that there is not enough surface area in the tank to support enough BB. What it has made me realize though is just how much the bacteria preferred to grow on/in my bio media in my canister filters than it did in my tank and its substrate/decor. Just something else to consider.

 

[Toby_H]

To give some food for thought here. I have just done this with my filtration and stock into my recently completed 800g. I have experienced no registrable ammonia or nitrite at all in the process.
However, I have the dovii back in the 180 with new filters but it still has all the original substrate and decor supporting BB in the tank to keep the tank going. Especially taking into account that the stock level has dropped from many to just 1 fish in this tank now. At least one would hope but it has been this tank I have have experienced a mini cycle in. So much so that I have swapped out some of the media and replaced it with some of the previous media from one of the other filters and things are back to normal.
Now I am not saying that this is not unexpected and that there is not enough surface area in the tank to support enough BB. What it has made me realize though is just how much the bacteria preferred to grow on/in my bio media in my canister filters than it did in my tank and its substrate/decor. Just something else to consider.

It doesn't at all surprise me the 800 gal didn't experience any detectable ammonia/nitrite... as the new tank has 4.5 times the water volume to dilute any potential spikes...

It does surprise me that the 180 gal with all the old substrate/decor did experience a mini cycle when the stock was reduced to one fish...

How long was the 180 gal without fish? Did you thoroughly overhaul clean the tank? did you use 'old tank water' in the new tank and then top the 180 gal off with tap water?

Since you have the 800 gallon tank, I think it's safe to assume you are a rather dedicated hobbyist with ample rational experience to know how to take steps to protect bacteria.

But at the same time I have to question dozens of things that could possible explain this other than... not enough bacteria lived in the substrate, decor, etc in a 180 gallon tank stocked with a number of fish to support the bio waste of a single fish... As I can/do accept that a large portion of bacteria lives in the filter, it seems rather odd to me based on my experience that with the reduced stock you didn't have enough int he tank...

 

[greenterra]

Answers in red.

It doesn't at all surprise me the 800 gal didn't experience any detectable ammonia/nitrite... as the new tank has 4.5 times the water volume to dilute any potential spikes...
Actually, the filters were filtering about 415g from the previous tanks so yes the volume has increased but only by double. Bio load as in fish has stayed the same minus the dovii. I do agree that dilution will still help here though.

It does surprise me that the 180 gal with all the old substrate/decor did experience a mini cycle when the stock was reduced to one fish...

How long was the 180 gal without fish? The 180 was without fish for a total of 15minutes
Did you thoroughly overhaul clean the tank?Decor and tank was left untouched as I did not want to kill of any BB.
did you use 'old tank water' in the new tank and then top the 180 gal off with tap water?. No. 800 was brand new water just temp adjusted prior to introducing stock and transferring filters.I left the 180 untouched with no W/C.

Since you have the 800 gallon tank, I think it's safe to assume you are a rather dedicated hobbyist with ample rational experience to know how to take steps to protect bacteria.

But at the same time I have to question dozens of things that could possible explain this other than... not enough bacteria lived in the substrate, decor, etc in a 180 gallon tank stocked with a number of fish to support the bio waste of a single fish... As I can/do accept that a large portion of bacteria lives in the filter, it seems rather odd to me based on my experience that with the reduced stock you didn't have enough int he tank...

My point is not that there is/would not be enough available area in the tank to support BB but this experience has shown that BB preferred the bio media as better medium to grow on/in. Hence my results.Take away the bio media and the BB would be forced to multiply else where one would think. It would have happened eventually but it wasn't doing it fast enough in my case. Ammonia or nitrite is no good in any amount and I wasn't going to subject my fish to that so I reintroduced seeded bio media into the new filters from an original filter which got things back on track very fast.

 

[tcarswell]

OK nut, please refer where I have misinformed anyone. And if my conception of a sensible amount of bio media is overkill then well so be it. Way I see it though it, buying an AC110 and only running the sponge and leaving out the biomax that comes with it is just plain stupid, don't care what your findings are, that's just bad advise.

Prove me wrong...within reason the more available area you provide for bacteria to grow the more stable you tank will be. Now I know your belief is that there is more then enough area within the tank, but if that is the case then why the continuous mini cycles when using the type filter I previously mentioned. Unfortunately because the flow though out the surface area with in the tank is low, the bacteria growth is concentrated in areas with higher flow.



OK and then after 60 days you will have proved that there is enough surface area within a 10g tank to support a 2"fish. Will you then add more fish? At what point will you stop. If you really want to post a finding then prove the maximum amount of fish that can be supported without bio media. Hope your not going to also try to prove that mech filtration is not needed also.

BTW you do know that tiger barbs are schooling fish, right?

You really love talking down to people don't you ? I kept Tiger barbs in kindergarten

The experiment would be about bio filtration and not mechanical filtration which I feel is necessary to support fish but just running a simple cartridge that I rinsed in hot water would allow me to keep the available surface area to the tank walls, heater ,and parts of the filter. There would be absolutely no bio intended media or decor.
Its an experiment however so since it has not finished yet I personally cant guarantee what I feel is going to happen will happen. That is why its an experiment.