[AquaticLife] Bacteria Question
Yes, the microscopic nitrifying bacteria live on all surface areas where there is a supply of oxygenated water. However, since all of the tank’s water flows through the filter system several times an hour, the overwhelming majority of the nitrifying bacteria will reside there since that’s where all the food is passing by on a constant basis. If you have a sponge or polyfloss pad or polyfill or whatever and water is flowing through it, then there will be nitrifying bacteria growing on the surface areas of that filter media. Other biological filtration would only be lagniappe or redundancy.
In fact, when someone buys a new filter system that comes with at least a single cartridge, like on a small Whisper 10, that is plenty enough filter media to hold all the nitrifying bacteria needed for a properly stocked 10G tank. As long as you rinse/swoosh/squeeze the filter cartridge/media in removed tank water on a weekly basis, to remove the majority of the detritus, that media will stay cycled and can be reused over and over and over for years and years.
If someone does not want to do filter cleaning, then they should have a filter system that has other means of biological filtration like a Bio-Wheel, BioMax, etc., so they are not completely trashing their biological filtration every time they change out their filter cartridge on a small filter system like a Whisper 10 or other single cartridge systems.
While the bio-wheels will harbor some nitrifying bacteria while just floating around in your tank, they would be home for thousands or millions of times more nitrifying bacteria if they were spinning in the outflow of the filters where they would be getting a constant supply of heavily oxygenated water flowing through/over the bio-wheel. That is the true purpose of why Marineland had Dr. Tim Hovanec invent the Bio-Wheel… so they could then, in good conscience, recommend changing out the filter cartridge on a regular basis without harming the fish. By having the Bio-Wheel as the primary home for the majority of the nitrifying bacteria, then trashing the cartridge would not harm the biological filtration very much…. although there is absolutely NO reason to ever trash one of their filter cartridges. They last for years and years and can even be modified to remove the carbon and add more filter media in that part of the cartridge…. see my blog article, “Filter Profile - Marineland Penguin 200 Bio-Wheel” for photos of how I modified mine.
Yes, running two HOB’s and only doing filter maintenance on one filter at a time is the best way but it’s still better to just do maintenance on the filter rather than trashing it for a new one. With two HOB’s, trashing one cartridge could mean you are trashing around 50% of your biological filtration meaning your tank will go into a mini-cycle that would mean potentially elevated ammonia/nitrite levels for a up to a couple of days every time you do this. Start testing your water for ammonia and nitrite after you trash one of your cartridges to see if your tank is going into a mini-cycle or not. The bioload and overall ecology of the tank will have an effect on this potential mini-cycle as well.
Lenny Vasbinder Fish Blog - http://GoldLenny.blogspot.com (Links to any articles referenced in above reply are listed on the right side, alphabetically under Labels and also under Archives by Year, Month)
Category: Philippines Internet Koi Society
