Facts of Life

[plebian]

1. Microbiomes are the single most important factor in keeping a healthy aquarium.

2. Every aquarium has a unique microbiome. This is partly due to varying water parameters, filtration and maintenance, and partly due to differences in inhabitants and feeding practices.

3. Aquarium microbiomes are extremely complex and poorly understood. The bacteria that make the nitrogen cycle possible make up only a small fraction of the microbial life, which includes fungi, algae, archaea, amoebas, and paramecia. In addition to single-celled microbes, there are microscopic multi-celled animals including protozoans, rotifers,and copepods, among others.

4. An established microbiome tends to be self-regulating. It takes time to establish a healthy microbiome. In my experience, 6 months is the minimum time required. It can easily take a year or longer.

5. The best way to establish a healthy microbiome is to minimize your interference with its natural evolution. This means avoiding chemical treatment of the aquarium water as much as possible. Obviously, any use of antibiotics will destabilize the microbiome. It also means regular water changes to replenish essential minerals necessary for all micro and macro aquarium inhabitants as well as removing the toxic waste that accumulates in a closed system.

 

[GaryE]

On point 5, most of us have to deal with chlorine or chloramines, and that necessitates chemicals. Beyond that, I think we have to avoid the systems that treat the microbiome as a magical force, and look at it as what it is - something that needs input and feeding. since it's in a tiny glass box, via regular water changing as our conscious contribution to the process.
I have a hard time with people wearing 'test kit goggles' - thinking they can see the processes in the tank by kits that test a couple of important but small elements. There's so much more to water than we can see, just as there is to our air. You shouldn't do water changes when your test kit tells you to - you should do them on a regular basis since you can't test for many important processes. I get my best results (with slightly unstable very soft tap) by sticking to 7 to 10 days, with 7 as the goal.
Stock lightly, grow plants and emulate natural systems as much as our unnatural hobby allows for.

I wonder where we stand in terms of heavily planted tanks, with the addition of fertilizers. A lot of the plants people like need that extra, and I wonder how it works with our attempts to get a tank working a bit like a gut? I stick with plants that can do well in my conditions without additions.

I view a tank as a process, and many of the things I see in the first few months to a year are unattractive. You get a series of algaes and such, most of which are temporary. And I'm not sure we can ever establish a natural type microbiome outside of a very large aquarium - although I think trying is a worthwhile approach. From the 1960s to the 80s, aquarists aimed for the balanced aquarium, which was to be a self regulating system. It failed, but didn't, as we have added elements as we went along. We've learned the value of water changes, and understood a lot more about fish and their needs. We know a lot more about the microbiome. This isn't about going into oversimplified father fish dogmatism, but about looking at some of the things his approach looks at, with less rigidity and religion to how we do it.

Some of us work at microbiomes, some like the engineering, gadget side of the hobby, some go for sterile multicoloured visuals, and the swirl of approaches is all called one hobby. Announcing we're dead right in our way of doing things seems to be the first step in going wrong, so all we can do is suggest, respect and listen. Aquarium keeping is a whole lot of different activities around a theme. My aquascaping friends think my tanks are as they are because I have too many, while if I had only one, I'd still be aiming for a stream bottom!

 

[Magnum Man]

I currently don't like to add anything but RO water, supplemented with a small amount of hard well water... any plant's have to thrive off of fish wastes, and compete with beneficial bacteria's... it usually takes me 6-9 months for the tanks to "mature", which at that point, something magical seems to happen... "balance" I don't even use carbon anymore... mostly just water change, vacuum once a month, and feed the fish...

 

[Back in the fold]

Huh . . . . I thought water was the single most important thing .

 

[GaryE]

Huh . . . . I thought water was the single most important thing .

I'd still argue it is, because as you maintain it, it's the habitat for the microbiome. We focus on the archaea and bacteria that give us the nitrogen cycle because we don't really understand all the other cycles that go on in well established tanks. They all contribute to the quality of the water and the well being of fish and plants (and themselves).

 

[Back in the fold]

I'd still argue it is, because as you maintain it, it's the habitat for the microbiome. We focus on the archaea and bacteria that give us the nitrogen cycle because we don't really understand all the other cycles that go on in well established tanks. They all contribute to the quality of the water and the well being of fish and plants (and themselves).

Yes , very true and I also like what @Magnum Man said . It takes 6 to 9 months for an aquarium to dial itself in . The fish waste and the food and the plants dying back along with regular maintenance makes a mature aquarium at about 6 to 9 months . It’s a process that nobody can rush .

 

[MaloK]

It’s a process that nobody can rush .

With enough dedication, I can have an epic bacterial bloom in one day instead of 5...

But I concur to around 8 months to establish a tank Is the average time it takes in many cases.

 

[GaryE]

If I'm honest, I've been in this house for 3 years, as of last month. I think most of my tanks are just now getting to where they were before I moved. That fishroom had been stable for 13 years.
The hobby's old tank syndrome is a risk when you don't do regular maintenance. You can create a dying lake effect, if you slack. But if you do what you should, the tank goes through stages.
I had about a year with black beard algae issues, but now I find that is vanishing, tank by tank. Not all my tanks are as stable, and it hangs on in the ones where planting is newer. It took a long time for the basic planting to rebound - I lost several large garbage bags of plants to the move. To get a healthy tank in 6 months, you need the basic elements. You can never achieve anything stable with no plants.
You can't do it with too many fish, overfeeding, etc. The most unbalanced thing in our tanks is ourselves - impulsive changes, lack of consistency, laziness, distraction...

Newcomers don't need to be horrified. It takes time, yes. But you can have a well managed tank quickly. You just can't get it working at its fullest without time.

 

[fishorama]

Some of us have "seasonal" water that adds to the uncertainty too. I lived where there was "winter water" from deep wells & "summer" from surface reservoirs. Always quite soft but maybe different in ways I couldn't easily test for.

Now I live where we have droughts & late summer into fall is apt to be different than springtime snow melt. There was a "harmless" algae bloom but the water smelled awful. We fridge carbon filtered drinking & coffee water & I skipped changing water for several weeks. Funny how that issue was fixed when 1 of the water control board member's water turned funky. I also used dechlor more heavily since I suspected part of the "fix" was more chlorine.

I love live plants too. Not just for their aesthetic value. They add to the "complete" tank picture of health. Fish may eat them, graze on them or just swim around them. The roots & leaves take in nutrients, provide cover, break up fish territories & help with substrate health.

I'm also a firm believer in the wonders of biofilms. Like little biomes of their own & in some ways separate from a tank's. They're more or less sealed off from other parts of a tank. But that's another topic...in a related way.

My water is too soft for snails & shrimp to be happy for long. I have bladder snails in 1 or 2 tanks, but they don't reproduce out of control; I don't mind some. I had a colony of blackworms for 8? years but they may be gone now.

So, I go with the thoughts that a tank's biome can & does change, it's not static. Sometimes it might be my fault for skipping water changes or doing smaller 1s. Or going on a plant cut back/removal binge. But on the whole, I do the best I can even if it's not always consistent & not the same for every tank.

 

[GaryE]

The problem with utopias is there's always another generation that will destroy them just because they didn't make them themselves. That's how our tank projects work - you somehow get things slightly balanced and new organisms begin to thrive, and force changes you may not appreciate. Tanks are such a complex web of different lives and different needs, and what makes an excellent biofilm thrive can harm your fish or one species of plant, and vice versa. Things happen, if you give them time.

The people who believe they can control nature can't even control it in a glass box. Most of those magnificent aquascapes we admire in photos lasted weeks at most after the shots immortalized a moment in their time.

Our hobby attracts a lot of control freaks, but I notice they don't last long in it. It's a humbling pastime if we're patient and observant enough to see what's going on. I see it as an incredibly complicated hobby where we only have to do simple things.

Take care of the basics, and things will happen - often ones we can't predict. If you look at the incredible range of biotopes out there in our world, how can we expect all our tanks to behave in the same way?

 

[emeraldking]

In my country we don't have chlorine nor chloramines in our tapwater. Which makes the process in the tank a bit faster.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Reading this I see a problem with the original post. It boils down to this. A tank is not a single microbiome. On even the most basic level this should be somewhat obvious. Let's start with this. There are biofilms filled with microorganisms and then there are the microorganisms living free swimming the water. They are not the same in several respects/ Further there are anaerobic vs anaerobic microgranisms at work in different places.

In a tank we have multiple microbiomes. A tank is a microbiota. This refers to the community of microorganisms that inhabit a specific environment. It encompasses a diverse range of organisms, including bacteria, viruses, fungi, and archaea.

So I think the OP may be better served to change the term from microbiome to microbiota to be more correct in describing to what he was referring?

 

[fishorama]

I think the OP is using "microbiome" as a very slightly different term than "microbiota" including some larger than "micro" organisms (macro?). Since I'll guess English may not be their 1st language, I'll give them a pass. & shouldn't it be "microbiotae" or something as a plural, my learned Latin friend? LOL, you know I agree with you, but I get to tease you sometimes

I suspect many "newbies" overclean their tanks & decor. Decor bleaching & too much scrubbing of surfaces can be very detrimental to establishing a "happy" tank biome, biota or even healthy biofilms. I know it's difficult to grasp that concept, but some algae & other "crud" is part of the big picture, given time.

 

[GaryE]

This has been a much wider ranging discussion than the one I had as a teenager on the facts of life.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

There are only a few facts of life- you are born, you live and then you die. Those are the facts
If one is very lucky then the we live part will have more good than bad in it.

From the google AI:

Estimates suggest that around 108 billion humans have lived on Earth, with the current global population representing about 7% of that total.

Forget about the 102.44 billion dead folks, What can you say about most of the current 7.56 billion? Hoe many of them are living a decent life?

And of the 108 billion no dead, how many do we think lived decent lives?