No water changes during cycling?

[daveedka]

When I was thinking about that, I was thinking about the exponential increase in my snail population when I'd feed my fishies too much.

Ahh but have you noticed the snails stay smaller when there are more of them, and if you increase food to yet a higher level the snails eat more and grow bigger? So the snail population is essentially capable of consuming a lot more food than was there to begin with. And yet can survive at high numbers on the original amount of food. Either way there is enough snail to consume all of the food available.

The only way to limit population is to reduce the level of food and essentially starve out the extra snails. At which time the strongest healthiest snails will survive as the colony slowly dies down to match the available food source



Maybe not the worlds best analogy to bacteria colonies, but similar anough to give some clarification.
Dave

 

[RTR]

Good thread! I am so relieved that folks do understand the nitrification bacteria do not grow at a different rate when excess ammonia/nitrite are present, but do grow to to a larger total colony size. The nitrification bacteria are slow growing in relation to most bacteria we have in tanks, but total time of the "cycle" is highly dependent on the size of the bacterial inoculum. That old myth has killed a lot of fish when fishy cycling is used.