Hi all,
In blackwater habitats conductivity can drop below 20us (about 13ppm TDS), but that might not be practical in an aquarium as the pH could drop too low for the microbial community.
I'm guessing that there will still be <"
microbial nitrification occurring">, just at a lower rate than "normal". My guess would actually be that there aren't any naturally occurring aquatic environments where <"
microbial nitrification doesn't occur">.
....... I was pretty sure the traditional view of cycling wasn't right, mainly because <
"fixed nitrogen"> is a scarce and valuable resource in the natural environment, so it didn't make any ecological sense that the organisms that could utilise it were restricted to a few bacteria, with highly specialised requirements for growth.
An analogy would be that there is a big pile of money in the street, with a note saying "take me", but it is only ever picked up by a one-legged ginger Irish-man on a Thursday..........
I've found a paper. It isn't really my field, but it looks pretty useful, I'll add in
@Andy Pierce as he may be able to give a more nuanced view.
Ni G, Leung PM, Daebeler A, Guo J, Hu S, Cook P, Nicol GW, Daims H, Greening C (2023). "Nitrification in acidic and alkaline environments".
Essays Biochem. 11:67(4) pp. 753-768 <"
Nitrification in acidic and alkaline environments">.
I think one of the issues with keeping blackwater fish (away from acidic, tannin and humic acid rich water), is that there is a lot more microbial activity in more "normal" water and this often leads to bacterial diseases and early mortality.
As an analogy I think it a bit like a person (let's just say an American) normally drinking heavily chlorinated water and regularly taking antibiotics and then going on holiday to "Mexico" and drinking the local water untreated.
Their decimated intestinal microbial biome isn't going to be in any condition to resist a new suite of (potentially opportunistically pathogenic) organisms and it is the same for blackwater fish when you take them out of their natural habitat and place them in "normal" water.
cheers Darrel