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Re: [APD] RE: Fertilizing a new tank(when to start)



--- Jim Seidman <james at mail1_seidman.net> wrote:

> How long is that? I honestly don't know how fast
> denitrifying bacteria grow.
> But if you're fertilizing the plants, then the bacteria
> must have all the
> nutrients they need to grow too.

But they don't both get to eat do they? ;-)

> 
> Scott H. writes:
> "If there was a large mass of such bacteria, shouldn't
> they
> then be turning nirates back to nitrites? Isn't that one
> of
> the features of anaerobiec bacteria?"
> 
> There's a whole denitrification cycle:
> NO3- -> NO2- -> NH4+ -> N2
> 
> Just as with nitrification, different bacteria handle
> different stages, and
> you can have incomplete processing where the cycle
> doesn't finish. In my
> tank, I never saw very high nitrite levels, although
> there may have been a
> spike that I missed. But given the NH4 spike, much of the
> nitrite must have
> been converted to ammonium.
> 
> Robert Ricketts writes:
> "When ammonia or nitrite
> are produced in the substrate, there should be enough
> oxidizers (facultative
> or aerobic) at higher levels of the substrate to oxidize
> any leakage before
> it hits the water column."
> 
> Literature on unplanted tanks says that establishing the
> nitrifying bacteria
> is a process that takes weeks. Why would a brand new
> planted tank have
> enough oxidizers? And why would they necessarily grow
> faster? Remember that
> at first you're starving bacteria that consume NH4, but
> heavily feeding
> bacteria that consume NO3 (if you're fertilizing a brand
> new tank, that is).
> So is it possible that denitrifying bacteria that consume
> NO3 could get a
> head start on nitrifying bacteria that consume NH4?
> 
> Robert, in your tanks what kind of NO3 concentration were
> you maintaining?
> When I bumped my NO3 level from 1 ppm to 10 ppm, it
> produced a measurable
> NH4 spike that lasted for days.
> 
> - Jim Seidman
> 
> 
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> 


=====
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