Bacteria vs Algae

magnus u are right on with that, that what i was trying to say in the start up tread i've been in the lfs and seen people buy 5 to 10 fish for a tank they setup yesterday, me knowing what s gonna happen. the ocean reefs are not closed in the current and waves take all those nasty things to the beach thats one heck of a skimmer james

 

That is absolutely true. Noone makes a better skimmer than nature!

I bet u your paycheck that we're going to make some skimmer fan really mad ;-)


Sent from my phone using my two opposable digits

 

I think the word here is balance. If one feeds one's tank in excess regularly, the population of bacteria required to nitrify the resulting ammonia would be larger than the corresponding population of those who feed only enough to keep the inhabitants fed. With all other variables being the same, the two tanks would both contain water with no ammonia or nitrites, but nitrates can accumulate under either scenario. The first tank would require a larger population of bacteria to accomplish the same end result as the sparsely-fed tank. I prefer to err on the side of not enough food. So far I have had no deaths I would attribute to starvation.

Those are some nice pictures, proreefer!

 

Most of the bacteria in the aquarium are aerobic as it is a oxygen dominated environment, and these bacteria require lots of oxygen. When the heterotrophic bacteria bloom into the water column and switch to their aerobic state, this is a big drain on the oxygen content of the water. Oxygen depravation is the only risk to the fish which i am aware of during a bacterial bloom, as the heterotrophs themselves are harmless to fish, so good advice is to increase aeration!

To help you to understand why bacterial blooms occur, overfeeding ,dead fish or dead plant matter will cause a rise in the reproduction of the heterotrophs in order to break down the organic waste, they re-produce too quickly to be able to attach themselves to a surface and this causes a bacterial bloom. As the ammonia production increases due to the increased mineralisation, the nitrifiers are slow to catch up (as i said above) and so you see an ammonia spike until the autotrophs reproduce enough to take care of it.

It is unclear whether the autotrophic nitrifiers ever bloom into the water
column or if they simply multiply too slowly to cause this effect.


Im sorry i used the word spawn it was simple the true word is bloom when they have and over abundance to fed on they bloom james

 

I too agree that there's a lot of underfed tanks, so many people worried about keeping nitrates at 0.. But every tank is different and a lot of people in this hobby like to skimp on equipment, and i think skimmer and lights are the most important. Also with that good skimmer it allows me to be able to "overfeed" my tank compared to someone running a lesser quality skimmer. It also depends on water changes as well.. Ill be the first to admit that Im not afraid of making sure my tank is well fed at least once a day.. For my 150, with a yellow tang, 2 maroon clowns, 2 triggers, and sailfin tang: my tank gets nori sheet, fish mash(oysters, shrimp, clams, cod, halibut, salmon), cyclopeeze, flakes, pellets, phytoplankton and zooplankton, and mysis... i also feed my carpet small chunks of shrimp, oysters, or clams... i do waterchanges every week 10% and i feel my tank is very healthy, everything opens up fully, has great color, and honestly already showing growth, even though the tank has only been set back up a month or so.. i use algea to tell me whether my tank is too nutrient rich, with metal halides and high nitrate water, the algea will pretty much instantly start to show you signs of overfeeding, or an overstocked tank..

I am in no way an expert in this hobby, but i have had a lot of success... Its all about keeping your system balanced.. and everyone has their different ways of keeping that balance..

 

When I first started with this tank I fed the fish once a day. I watched them for a while. When they are fed once a day they tend to go into an almost feeding frenzy. Seems like it was very stressful for them so I upped the feeding to twice daily. Since I did that feeding time seems to be much more laid back.

I've been thinking that in the ocean food of one kind or another is constantly available so I've been researching ways to have a consistent small amount of food always present instead of dumping stuff in the tank every little bit. I think growing live foods is the key here since live food doesn't break down unless the critter dies for one reason or another.

Right now I have micro brittle stars, a couple of different types of pods, bristle worms, and snails breeding in the tank so their larval stages are the zooplankton I currently have. I may look into just adding more critters so that their babies add to the diversity but then I'm also researching phytoplankton.

Not sure where my research is going to lead just yet. LOL

 

Beautiful mixed reef proreefer.

Personally I would rather see a new hobbyist use a skimmer and closely monitor feedings. My rational is that new tanks tend to have radical swings in water chemistry and size of biological filter. The learning curve for a new hobbyist with all the theories on different techniques and styles makes it hard to find a good balance. A skimmer and moderate feedings provides for a larger margin of error.

Someone as far down the road as you are with regard to your experience is better able to see the big picture, but that came with trail and error over many years.

My tank I feed pretty heavily considering it's size and I have not used a skimmer for over a year. The reason I think it works for me is that the tank is 3 years old. I am not trying to incorporate too many different types of corals into one environment. Mostly sps with some lps and a few softies.

Lastly, I do not believe chasing the numbers is the only way to achieve the same outcome, a healthy tank. Let the appearance of your corals, inverts and fish play strongly into your tank husbandry.

I have seen many a reef with pale, slow growing corals where the hobbyist thought that adding another piece of equipment or the addition of a certain product would help them achieve what was eluding them. Usually if they increased their feeding, stopped aggressively polishing the water and backed of on trying to obtain the nirvana of consent values of 0 for N/P they would most likely see better results in the long run.

 

No worries, we all make typos


Everyone has really provided great ideas and info in this thread. There is a lot of great info here!

 

there's not a thing you said I disagree with, if's there's nothing to feed in a new tank take it slow, when you start to see life in the sand bed add eough to compensate for that life and maybe a little more to spur breeding or blooms of good bacteria that compensate for the extra food.

lets take a bass fish for and example, I was a little surprised to learn that they control there population for the amount of food they have in any given lake. they will eat there offspring to control there survival.
I'm convinced it's the amount of food we put in our tanks that control the amount of life in it. Little food little life James

 

That is fantastic Ron if you don't have any fish that will eat peppermint shrimp put atleast 10 in your tank. there fecal pellets will feed filter feeders such as tube worms the more tubes you have filtering I say the better the water I just drop some shrimp or fish pieces tied to a stone down to them everyother day or so and put iodine in the tank once a week so they can molt. they will eat from your hand once they know you want hurt them James