Live rocks do not take on more bacteria when you remove surrounding surface area, forum myth busting

[brandon429]

When you remove extra surface area that a reef doesn't require to function, live rocks dont stack on extra layers of new bacteria in relation to your removed mass. if they did, the filtration efficiency would go down and not up because you did not add new attachment points, surface area.




example
I removed all my fish for fallow 76 days, and before I put them back do I have to re-add bacteria?

No. The filtration system didn't change with or without your fish per a device that measures nh3 to the thousandths ppm (seneye)

the bacteria had natural ways of attaining feed consistency independent from our allowances, in an open-topped reef tank full of organic waste.
____________________________________________________________________

wanting to test the claim that live rocks must be given ramp up time to take on new bac during surface area exchanges, i think it does not occur and was a made up rule. it helps to oversell bottled bacteria purchases where not required.

its great to finally have accurate ammonia testing in the hobby, we can bust many myths now.

 

[brandon429]

anticipating a slew of requests for peer-reviewed material to back claims: post some agreed.

we'll be working with work thread links here as usual to make new rules and show old ones have been made up.


Why would contact filtration efficiency decrease by adding more bacteria to a set of already-functioning live rocks?

common rule says it would increase, more bacteria is better filtration, always.

but is that true? are there ways to directly measure this event, or lack thereof, even if we can't actually count the # of bac colonies on the rock surface?

we've measured it in work threads using seneye devices lots of times.

Live rocks manage their bacterial ebb and flow, boons and busts, as an average and its regulated by water shear and intraspace competition and nutrient avail/several factors even if you have sand or no sand.



sand grains regulate their bacterial constants related to their zone, and flow, whether or not you have live rocks

surface area is what matters in wastewater management, too many bacteria are a liability because layering reduces surface area it doesn't increase it (clogged filter effect, channeling, reduction of surface area presentation vs clean filter)

the right amount of bacteria is what works best, not 'more'

just because we dump more Fritz into a tank doesnt mean it has anywhere to attach. it floats, attaches to suspended floc eventually and settles or is skimmed out/removed in water changes. it doesnt stack on live rock higher

*bottle bac reduce ammonia even when in suspension but a water change ends that; the true definition of a cycle is that a full water change cannot undo it, bacteria are stuck to surfaces and insulated in biofilms

we have the right amount of bacteria on rocks when a cycle is complete, they dont starve off or stack layers deep to accomodate fish, live rocks manage their bacteria independently from the bioloading, and that's 100% against hobby and forum advice.

with this new rule set in place we can:

-remove the sandbed from a thousand reef tanks instantly, on seneye, and track no change in nh3 control though half the surface area is gone (the single best test for the claim above all is instant sandbed removal using mindstream or seneye to see if bacteria were over harvested)

-we can deep clean reefs to prevent invasion losses, without worrying about bacterial loss

-move reef tanks from home to home, or to a reef convention, and not kill things even if we want to change up the scape

-we can run fallow approaches on thousands of tanks, and not lose fish, and not have to buy bottled bac for the event.

-we can set up hospital tanks very quickly and effectively, for broken tank issues or crashes etc

we can save money by not re-purchasing bottle bac just in case, if concerned we must add more surface area not more bacteria. The hobby only considers what bacteria do, not how they're presented to wastewater and that makes us easy sales targets.

 

[fcmatt]

I am afraid to give a solid reply/answer requires a more scientific background on the subject then I am capable of.

 

[brandon429]

I'm pretty much winging it, but have a bunch of tests already in place via threads which reinforce the new claim

thank u for posting Matt



what bacteria tolerate or dont tolerate regulates our entire hobby its fun to test paradigms

the reason we want to move beyond old myths is so that we can control our tanks with precision, not hesitancy. we preserve systems better that way, less loss and less redundant purchasing is better

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Cool! Following!

 

[brandon429]

Trying to make a case against rather well-seated reef rules.

If it helps to know, Dr Tim responded in a similar thread and reminded us that bacteria in place can make quick adjustments to how much ammonia they process

As soon as I can recall the long title of that thread I’ll post it lol


I understood that to be like a person who could choose to stack ten weights per minute vs able to stack thirty weights per minute with the right motivation. I didn’t know before then nitrifying strains of bacteria can alter metabolic rates to suit the need. Ammonia is a quickly, quickly used compound in reefing our tanks are hungry for it


comparatively, ammonia in is shorter supply than o2 it seems. Our tanks leave every day with an oxygen abundance


and they live every second scrubbing ammonia down to parts per billion. There is no time in reefing nh3 ammonia holds in the tenths ppm, the most common reported reading for ammonia is wrong in every post. We had enough bacteria in every case or nh3 will rise to a crash, there is no hold in the middle I can clearly see by post patterns from seneye and ms

 

[FishDoc]

When you remove extra surface area that a reef doesn't require to function, live rocks dont stack on extra layers of new bacteria in relation to your removed mass. if they did, the filtration efficiency would go down and not up because you did not add new attachment points, surface area.


example
I removed all my fish for fallow 76 days, and before I put them back do I have to re-add bacteria?

No. The filtration system didn't change with or without your fish per a device that measures nh3 to the thousandths ppm (seneye)

the bacteria had natural ways of attaining feed consistency independent from our allowances, in an open-topped reef tank full of organic waste.
____________________________________________________________________

wanting to test the claim that live rocks must be given ramp up time to take on new bac during surface area exchanges, i think it does not occur and was a made up rule. it helps to oversell bottled bacteria purchases where not required.

its great to finally have accurate ammonia testing in the hobby, we can bust many myths now.

You’re somewhat answering your own statement within your message however there is a bit of confusing structure to your statement. Unless I read you post to quickly I didn’t see any indication that you “altered the available surface area” during your fallow period. This being the case, of course there was no need to ramp back as because as you mentioned, your take was in surplus of nutrients and thus could sustain your bacteria load through fallow. Am I missing something here?

 

[brandon429]

Nearly everyone in reefing would say they starved during fallow even with no change of surface area, because an api ammonia test ran along the way/ after adding fish back said .25 or .5


but I agree they didn’t starve, we didn’t remove surface area which is what it would take to be at a deficit, and seneye is never going to read in the tenths ppm nh 3 for anyone. Our entire concept on what bacteria do in the hobby is set by api, so most of us see bacteria as solely dependent on us for food, sustenance and inoculation and the reverse is actually true.

as soon as good nh3 testers hit the hobby, cheap ones, our concept of what bacteria do will change and our expenditures will markedly change, bottle bac sales will drop when accurate ammonia testing replaces inaccurate reads. I have a thread in the chem forum where we track api ammonia tied to bottle bac re purchasing and the numbers are astronomical

we are intercepting posters daily who are on their 3rd, 4th addition of fritz and that ammonia is still stuck at .25 no matter what....with a reef full of happy fish and corals each time

we explain to them that reef cycles can’t stall, and not to add any bottle bac, and stop testing for ammonia unless they want the $300 job seneye which will have them stop purchasing bac vs buying more

thank you for posting on my unique concept thread

 

[ca1ore]

I have never used any of the bottled bacteria products ….. and cannot imagine a situation where I would. I have always assumed that the number of bacteria to properly manage a bio-filter will wax and wane based on available food; thus reducing the bio-load (by going fallow, as example) will reduce the capacity of the biofilter. How quickly it can ramp back up is unclear to me, though when I have done tank upgrades, the lack of any measurable ammonia suggests to me that it can ramp up quite quickly. I have not personally ever fallowed a tank, so cannot speak to that specifically.

Also seems to me that bacteria will colonize all available surface area. Less densely when surface area to bio-load ratio is lower; more densely when surface area to bio-load ratio is higher. I've no idea whether bacterial 'piling on' reduces capacity or not. All I know is that I have never had a tank where even a quite modest amount of rock wasn't sufficient for a functioning bio-filter. I also know that in a system with plenty of bio-filter capacity, additional added media will be colonized by bacteria because I have successfully employed that approach to instantly cycle my QT tanks.

Interesting topic!

 

[92Miata]

@ca1ore

The population doubling time for Nitrosomas is about 10 hours - so yeah - it absolutely can ramp up very rapidly.


Bacterial populations absolutely change as load changes. It doesn't really matter though because populations can scale so rapidly. And yeah - I agree - I don't think I've ever seen a reef tank that is actually limited by insufficient rock/surface/filter area.

 

[Cell]

In other words, bacteria level on a rock is static, once it fully colonizes all available surface area, it stays at this level. It does not adjust to bioload.

Correct?

Is this saying its impossible to starve out an established nitrifying bacteria colony in general or just in this application, our reef tanks?

 

[brandon429]

I do think so. that we cant starve them post-cycle


we tend to leave fallow tanks full of organic feed in each space, thats years of sustenance

the practice of cycling wait, and the inherent algae/cyano/diatoms the world tells us to grow in all cycling tanks inevitably traps organics because we can see them; take any algae coated new rock and twist it around mid tank sharply at night with a flashlight shining on it

total organic casting happens every time.

we build bacteria feed traps and feed them


skin cells, gnats, floc and dander have a tiny fraction protein component/deamination further breaks down into waste ammonia by bacteria that aren't necessarily filter bacteria, and association helps the nitrifiers

so many feed pathways, new ones we haven't even been shown yet I bet await discovery



until we get seneye or hach digital lab meters I think all we have is our inferences from hands-on work. I can indeed imagine some micro layers of bacteria stacking up we'd never know without a direct ability to count if ten new fish are added to a system, but at the exact same time I claim that to be neutral in effect because waste doesnt penetrate scum layers very much at all, by their design, and adding more layers reduces surface area vs expands it. I think water shear and natural competition factors keep live rock self - guiding and when it doesnt we get those bac bloom threads which usually aren't permanent and aren't very prominent, most reef tanks won't see bacterial issues in their life and Ive never seen one that was suffering from inability to control nh3 even after we did the craziest things to the whole system

appreciate all input here

* one study I saw for starvation made a case for it, in this restricted way: via chat Dr Reef and I got to watch some starving go down lol

he dumped bottle bac into a test nano of only siporax media, salt water, a glass vase with total seal lid, and set it on his mantle for fourteen months unfed.

A pinhole -only- was vented to the outside world. I posed that no matter the inlet size, contamination would feed everything even though the system had zero organic stores

and that would be wrong lol they were dead as a doornail on mo 14 I trust Dr Reef's api wielding and the dang test was unable to move any test ammonia down

without carbon and some form of sustenance they dont emerge very well and indeed look dead.

we do not have clear testing for organic-laden systems on starvation, but we've got this at least for starters:

36 mos fallow sits in garage kept wet but awaiting use live rock + coralline

dosed with ammonia one time, passes oxidation. benthic life was still in the tank, and by firm rule of association any set of rocks with benthic life forms attached and associated is cycled, and apparently remains that way

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in my opinion the thread gives us hints that the bacteria didnt retrograde on those rocks but the constant was maintained with no feed input, only organics + garage dander

 

[Stigigemla]

The bacteria is living. They dont live long but they reproduce all of the time.
How many they are is dependent of how much food they get and some times if there is surface enough to populate on.
So of coarse: If You dont feed a tank for several weeks the bacteria population will reduce drastically.
But it will be some left. And they will reproduce quickly when You start feeding in the tank again.
I recommend to start feeding slowly if You populate an empty tank. In a week You can feed fully again because the bacteria has reproduced.
A usual recommendation for fish in new tanks is to by a few fishes first and then maximum double the amount after a trip to the LFS. So why not do it that way. The tank is like a new tank after the cycling.