Hello,
The amount of bacteria that live on the surface of the filter media are limited to their food supply (generically, broken down fish waste).
It is useful to have enough real estate to host a colony large enough to process the entire system's waste.
It wouldn't make sense to have 10 cubic feet of bio balls on a tank with three 4" goldfish.
Has this been addressed in the forums already? Aquaponics people measure systems with the ratio of food added at the top of the food chain (pelets) to plants. (A 10k gallon system can handle X fish eating X kg of food per day when paired with X meters squared of plants.) Is there a similar chart for us tiny-scale home aquarium folks? I looked for this in the forums but my search skillz are not that mad.
In my specific case I am looking for how many cubic feet of bio balls are needed to house bacteria for 3 oscars, 2 pictus, 1 jack dempsy, and 1 parrot fish. I have plenty of space in the aquarium stand and the DIY sump for far more than enough media but would like to use extra space for other experiments rather than unsaturated bio balls.
Thank you, in advance.
The amount of bacteria that live on the surface of the filter media are limited to their food supply (generically, broken down fish waste).
It is useful to have enough real estate to host a colony large enough to process the entire system's waste.
It wouldn't make sense to have 10 cubic feet of bio balls on a tank with three 4" goldfish.
Has this been addressed in the forums already? Aquaponics people measure systems with the ratio of food added at the top of the food chain (pelets) to plants. (A 10k gallon system can handle X fish eating X kg of food per day when paired with X meters squared of plants.) Is there a similar chart for us tiny-scale home aquarium folks? I looked for this in the forums but my search skillz are not that mad.
In my specific case I am looking for how many cubic feet of bio balls are needed to house bacteria for 3 oscars, 2 pictus, 1 jack dempsy, and 1 parrot fish. I have plenty of space in the aquarium stand and the DIY sump for far more than enough media but would like to use extra space for other experiments rather than unsaturated bio balls.
Thank you, in advance.