ichiromariners
Member
i have a 55 gallon and i have a maroon clown and a six line wrasse. other then that i have 4 feather dusters and lots of crabs and snails. do they affect my bioload or only fish?
is bioload affected by number of inverts?
- Thread starter ichiromariners
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lazy east911
Member
yes inverts,fish,coral.
lazy east911
Member
strongly agree^
skirrby
Active Member
there is a 75 gallon tank at a lfs by my girlfriends house. has a decent ammount of fish and a nice clean up crew with a hammer, bubble, open brain, and some other soft corals and a clam.. and today i took a peek under the stand to find nothing but a small wet/dry with bioballs and no skimmer anywhere. i didnt even care to know what the water parameters were cause knowing that shop the guy probably dont even care.
krishj39
Active Member
While not perfectly accurate, a practical question to ask when you are wondering if it will add to your bio-load is, "do I have to intentionally add food for this?" If the answer is "yes" then it adds to your bioload. The practical truth is that additional bioload starts with the food you add to the tank. If you aren't adding any more food to keep the animal alive then there can be no more waste produced than if the animal wasn't added.
(the reason this isn't perfectly accurate is that some animals live off of naturally occuring food in the tank such as algae or pods, however the increase in bioload from these types of animals is almost always insignificant)
(the reason this isn't perfectly accurate is that some animals live off of naturally occuring food in the tank such as algae or pods, however the increase in bioload from these types of animals is almost always insignificant)
elfdoctors
Active Member
But the ammonia has to come from somewhere. Ammonia (NH3) is the first waste in the nitrogen cycle. I am not aware of any nitrogen fixers (organisms that convert atmospheric nitrogen into organic nitrogen, e.g legumes) in a saltwater tank. The nitrogen comes primarily from proteins. Fats and carbohydrates have no appreciable nitrogen in them.
IMO, Krishj39 hit it on the head. If you have to feed them extra, they do increase the bioload. But most of them are scavengers and don't need extra food. We can kill the tank with kindness by overfeeding.
Organisms that use up O2 do not necessarily make ammonia as a waste product, (e.g. plants at night). O2 is used as part of the Carbon cycle to make CO2 as a waste product.
IMO, Krishj39 hit it on the head. If you have to feed them extra, they do increase the bioload. But most of them are scavengers and don't need extra food. We can kill the tank with kindness by overfeeding.
Organisms that use up O2 do not necessarily make ammonia as a waste product, (e.g. plants at night). O2 is used as part of the Carbon cycle to make CO2 as a waste product.
broomer5
Active Member
In my way of thinking - anything that is alive in the tank affects the bioload.
Bacteria, inverts such as our clean up crews, inverts such as our corals with zooxanthellae, worms, pods, algaes and marine plants - would all either have a positive or negative impact on the tank - or both.
The numbers of living creatures including inverts certainly affects the tank conditions.
A 55 gallon tank with 20 hermits and 20 snails vs the same tank with 200 hermits and 200 snails.
The bioload would not be the same - therefore their numbers and biological/biochemical processes would impact one tank differently than the other.
I suppose it depends on each of our own definitions or understanding of what the term "bioload" means to us.
Everything alive affects the bioload in my opinion.
Bacteria, inverts such as our clean up crews, inverts such as our corals with zooxanthellae, worms, pods, algaes and marine plants - would all either have a positive or negative impact on the tank - or both.
The numbers of living creatures including inverts certainly affects the tank conditions.
A 55 gallon tank with 20 hermits and 20 snails vs the same tank with 200 hermits and 200 snails.
The bioload would not be the same - therefore their numbers and biological/biochemical processes would impact one tank differently than the other.
I suppose it depends on each of our own definitions or understanding of what the term "bioload" means to us.
Everything alive affects the bioload in my opinion.
tagg
Member
Originally posted by broomer5
Everything alive affects the bioload in my opinion.
This is sort of funny, we all say the same thing but with different words.
So... We now must say that not just everything alive affects the bioload, but everything dead also affects the bioload. A dead rock would create more surface area, hence more area for bacteria, algae, etc... to grow, changing the bioload yet again.
:yes: Tagg