Why do you need nitrifying bacteria in fish tank? While a natural lake does not

Why do you need nitrifying bacteria in fish tank? While a natural lake does not

One of the most common wrong concept of fish aquarium is that the aquarium is a small size lake ecosystem, that fish, water-based plants, decompresor live in a balanced system.

However, in fact, it is totally different to build up a ecosystem in your fish tank. The natural ecosystem has negative feedback mechanism. If organic compound is too much, decompresor will increase since the sufficient supply of food, which consume more organic compound and maintain the water quality. 

This will take as long as several months even several years. But consider your fish tank, you cannot let your fish tank with a green water for several months with disgusting smell and dead fish.

Thus, I would describe your fish tank as a clown riding a unicycle. You need to monitor and balance the lives in the aquarium all the time.

It is not easy, but you could be the god of this minor ecosystem.

Comparing to the visible stuffs in your tank including fish, plants, water, the most essential and neglected is decompresor, in another word: nitryfying bacteria. Consider: your fish live in the water, grass live in sandy soil, while what is the home of your nitryfying bacteria?

They need a home even though they are not visible.

Normally we choose the porous structure stuffs, which are always called as bacteria house to feed them. Bacteria house can be any shape, cuboid, cubic or circle, as if they could be put into your water circulatory system, after the physical filter media.

Given a house to live, the bacteria grows in the molecular level holes in bacteria house, they could transfer the toxic NH4+ in two steps: First, transfer NH4+ to NO2-. Note: NO2- is still toxic, even more toxic than NH4+. But no worries, it would be transfered to NO3- by another kind of nitrifying bacteria. NO3- is non-toxic and your fish is safe.

Choose a good bacteria house is important for you to feed those bacteria. Remember, you are not only feeding fish. You are feeding the whole ecosystem!

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