[AquaticLife] Changing Ph
While I’m sure some of the bacteria do live on the mulm, the majority of it lives on the individual strands and surface areas of the actual filter media. The N-bacteria need ammonia/nitrite but they also need lots of O2 which they get from a constant supply of water flowing over them. When the mulm buildup gets too thick so that the water doesn’t flow through the filter and instead flows over the top of the filter cartridge, the N-bacteria will start to die off due to lack of O2.
I do filter maintenance on one of my filter systems every week. I have two systems on my 65G tank so I am technically doing filter maintenance every two weeks on each system. I’ve read where some people wait until the filter system water flow slows down before doing cleaning but I think this is waiting too long. For one thing, it’s allowing a lot of mulm/detritus to build up and decay back into the tank. As I stated above, it also blocks the water flowing to the N-bacteria so it starts to kill them off also.
Seriously… it’s bad enough that we make our fish swim around in their own pee and poop for a week before doing a PWC… for those of us that do weekly PWC’s. Imagine what the water must be like after the fish have been in it for a month or more like some folks wait between doing PWC’s? It’s too bad our fish can’t scream like a baby with a dirty diaper. That would sure surprise the heck of out someone who likes to wait a long time between PWC’s. LOL
Lenny Vasbinder Fish Blog - http://GoldLenny.blogspot.com
Category: Philippines Internet Koi Society
