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Test reading not what i expected ?

Hi all,
..... I actually started writing the "cycling" posts before I knew about the <"Ammonia Oxidising Archaea (AOA)"> and COMAMMOX Nitrospira. 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....
While I was searching for something else <"I found this post from 2014">.
.... The problem really comes with the whole concept of "cycling", it is based upon the idea that all the nitrifying bacteria are in the filter media in the filter and that if they don't get a constant supply of ammonia they will all die, this is an extremely dubious premise at best, and as soon as you add plants and substrate it is virtually irrelevant. You also have to factor in that "plant/microbe systems" are about an order of magnitude more efficient than "microbe alone" systems in processing ammonia.

In reality if we have plants we just need to ensure that we have high levels of dissolved oxygen and some supply of carbon (usually as HCO3-). Plants (and particularly those with emergent stems or floating leaves) are a "win,win, win" scenario, they add dissolved oxygen (even outside of the photo-period, and into the substrate via the root rhizosphere), they preferentially take up ammonia (and NO2/NO3), and they provide surfaces for nitrification...

cheers Darrel
 
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