The biUbe Aquarium Guide

In nature where fish live there is normally an adequate volume of water that any pollution or waste becomes very diluted to a level that is not harmful. In a biUbe or any other aquarium some sort of filtration is needed. Any aquarium needs three types of filtration:

1. Mechanical Filtration
2. Biological Filtration
3. Chemical Filtration

 What’s great about the biUb and biOrb filtration system is the that Mechanical and Chemical filtration is held in the filter cartridge that you change every four to eight weeks. The biological filter is the ceramic media and hence why I mentioned in the biUbe Aquarium Guide that it is absolutely essential to the aquarium. 

Cycling the tank.

I’ll try and keep this as non technical as possible, cycling the tank is basically letting the biological filter establish it’s self. By establishing its self I mean allowing nitrifying bacteria to develop and live. This type of bacteria is found naturally every where and all it needs to establish is some food. It turns out that in this case the nitrifying bacteria’s favorite food is fish poo! Mmmmmm lovely!

So, when you first set up your tank there is no food for the nitrifying bacteria and hence it does not develop. At first the biological filter is non-existent and hence why I said in the adding fish article that you should only initially add two or three small fish. The tank could not cope with the amount of waste be created by more fish than this and effectively the fish would be swimming in toxins. Not good.

So here is a simple version of what happens from the moment you as a fish to your new tank:

1. Fish eat
2. Fish poo, fish poo contains ammonia – too much ammonia is poisoness to fish.
3. Nitrifying bacteria start to feed on the ammonia
4. The type of bacteria than feed on the ammonia turn it into nitrite – also not so good for fish.
5. As luck would have it, another form of bacteria develops that turns the nitrite into nitrate – harmless to fish. Happy fish! 

So you can see that this is a complete cycle and that it takes time for enough bacteria to develop to match the ammonia being produced by the fish and hence why you should only add a small amount of fish at a time. This whole process takes between two and six weeks to develop.