QUOTE: ”A tank, whether glass or a manmade pond, is basically stagnant water.”

QUOTE: ”A tank, whether glass or a manmade pond, is basically stagnant water.”

“A tank, whether glass or a manmade pond, is basically stagnant water. A natural lake is continuously replenished with fresh(er) water.  PH affects what microbes can exist in sediment. Ignore pH at the risk of creating anaerobic pockets in the soil in the bottom, even with very good flow through the under gravel filtering system, because, aerobic microbes may not be able to live in the pH range.”

The more water per inch of fish, the better, unless you are keeping fighting fish. They seem to love really horrible, cramped quarters.”

 

As the rocks get turned over only then can you see what the bacteria are doing and it’s not good.



  I don’t think anyone would call a pond or aquarium “stagnated water” by any means; it would more likely be a closed system at lest in scientific terms that is. Most ponds and aquariums have moving water in them by mechanical means or natural means like wind, temperature and so on. Even in a substrate where water is moving very slowly then the bacteria may deplete the available oxygen and carbon in it but it is still moving nonetheless. This could be through diffusion; convection, percolation but it is still is moving and not stagnated. This is why the gravel in an aquarium turns black because the water is still moving through it by chemical reaction but it lacks the oxygen it once carried. Other whys how would the ammonia ion get back in solution into the aquarium if it wasn’t moving to do so?

  When we talk about biological filtration and the microorganisms that live in it, pH really is not the limiting factor on the number of bacteria living in the substrate. Bacteria are very resilient to their environment and in a very short time will adjust to biological and chemical changes within that environment.

  In fact they can become super bugs to chemical treatments, that first may kill them or hinder their reproduction cycle but then they will dimorph and bounce right back again. pH is nothing more than a chemical change that may hinder some bacterium but not those of organic decay and nitrogen fixation, but others in the same genus will take their place in the bacteria world.

  pH also has nothing to do with anaerobic or aerobic bacteria either. Oxygen and the lack of carbon control the types of microorganisms that will live in the substrate not pH. A pH swing may affect the reproduction cycle of bacteria but that will be short lived if there is plenty of oxygen and available foodstuff.  

This water just isn’t dirty, its blacken from the bacteria.

  That is why in a pond or aquarium the pH can be 6.0 -9.0 pH and your biological filter will not be affected by it. However, if you’re talking about obligated anaerobic bacteria doing fermentation processes (oxygen availability is lacking in the substrate) then pH will drop by sulfate-reducing bacteria that oxidizes organic compounds or molecular hydrogen in the process of their reducing those compounds. That is because these bacteria literally respire sulfate and have no use for oxygen in anaerobic respiration. Once again that is oxygen is in sort supply and not the pH being too low or too high. The pH is an outcome of the fermentation processes but will not trigger the process alone, nor the bacterium living in the substrate.

  Adding more oxygen to the substrate even as low as .5-ppm and almost immediately following the obligated anaerobic bacterium will die and facultative anaerobic bacteria will take over. This is a good bacterium that hobbyists want and this is called ANOXIC conditions. Once again pH will normalize back to expectable levels.

  The fact of it is, even at a 2.2 pH like that of the lemon has; bacteria will survive and grow as long as it has food and oxygen. Yet, these bacteria will be obligated forms and not the sulfate-reducing bacteria that grow without oxygen.

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