Understanding Water Quality and Nitrates.....? - Page 2 - Aquarium Plants

Tom Barr · 10-23-2006, 06:04 AM

Yes and no, we export DOC's with water changes, non CO2 tanks on the other hand w/no water changes do not have that export, so then the bacteria start to break it down into CO2 and energy via respiration which removes??

O2 to oxidize the DOC(reduced carbon).

Th low bioloading in non CO2 tanks is mainly to match the low NH4 removal and limited supply of CO2.

Many folks have more fish and more algae, but it's less to do with the DOC;s, but to some degeree that can reduce the dOC loading by having less fish, but plants are also a large source of DOC themselves, like 10% of their fixed carbon is leached out as DOC's..........

Regards,
Tom Barr

Quote:

Originally Posted by Laith

Does this also apply in our tanks (DOCs decompose and aren't an issue)?

I'm a bit puzzled because I had always thought that, in our closed systems (our tanks), there was always some type of waste/organic byproduct that accumulated and needed to be diluted. Ok, in an unplanted African Cichlid tank that "something" would be mainly NO3 but also other organics (DOCs). As a planted tank will remove the NO3 issue, one is still left with the DOCs accumulating... or that's what I had always assumed.

And I thought that this was one of the main reasons that in a low light non-CO2 planted tank a key point was to keep a low bioload. This allowed you to do very infrequent water changes as the low bioload meant less organics...

Or have I got it all wrong?