Practically speaking you may be right. I've never tested dropping in that many fish at once (or anything proportional to it). I would say from a biofilm perspective it's more intricate than what you're saying though. Even though the surfaces external and internal are covered with a biofilm (stacked bacteria), adding different inputs such as ammonia could cause a microbial shift within the biofilm (ie increasing the numbers of nitrifying bacteria).That’s key, there’s nothing to ramp up. The bacteria are full on existing surfaces. If anything is in doubt based on prior fails seen, we would need to add more surface area not coax more bacteria (I have never seen a fail logged before for nitrification rates among stacks of live rock)
Bacteria are never limiting in any aspect of bioload carry, there are no known instances of live rock unable to keep up with a bioload in a display reef I’ve seen. Bacteria do not react to the increased bioload by increasing in numbers, there’s no space for them.
Stacking on top of current bacteria doesn’t increase surface area, only new surfaces to attach can provide the required attachment space and exposure to wastewater. Dr. Tim has discussed that the mechanism used is current bacteria instantly begin processing more waste should no extra surface area be given.
Either way it will be interesting to see how it goes @Hydrored