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Yeah that's a pretty good analogy. Technically I'd say brine cysts are more like sporulated microbes because they have a durable shell. So dormant microbes are a bit more fragile but yeah pretty close.

Well it sounds like you made up your mind before asking the question then. I suspect there's other things at play during some or all of these crashes too, and a lot of it is confirmation bias. But I'm not in everyone's house watching their tanks so I can't say for sure. It may be that it takes these bacteria some time to restart their metabolism when ammonia shows up again and so there's time for a momentary jump in ammonia, enough excess ammonia will also kill nitrifying bacteria (I think I've read something like 4ppm). It could also be anerobes out compete and or kill the aerobes with toxin/antitoxins when you loose too much oxygen, or one of another million things that wouldn't effect a monoclonal culture of microbes. Ecosystems and even aquariums are complex things, and there can be complex reasons why things happen and we just ascribe simple explanations when we don't have a complete understanding. FWIW I'm not trying to get you to "fall for" anything. Buy it, or don't, I don't care about that. But personally I do get upset when people underestimate the amazingness of microbes, the things they can do, and the things they can tolerate. Hopefully I've also convinced some people that yes you can put bacteria in a bottle and it will come out the other end alive. How that effects aquarium cycling outcomes---I've not seen a study about that. But if we're going by anecdotes there's as many anecdotes of bottled bacteria working as there are crashing cycles presumably because their bacteria died from lack of ammonia or O2. so 🤷‍♂️ .

the coop sight says Bucephalandra "Green Wavy" needs low light but I'd like to put it in a higher spot in my aquarium that probably gets medium to high light. Is that okay? Some sites say low to high is okay but I thought I'd see what people here's experience is.

I define a cycled tank as a tank that has enough nitrifying bacteria to convert ammonia to nitrite then nitrate at a rate that's at least as fast as ammonia is entering your tank (through rotting stuff or fish poop or from a bottle). So bottled bacteria add lots of nitrifying bacteria that can colonize your tank. Bacterial growth is exponential (assuming plentiful nutrients) so starting with say 10^9 bacteria gets saves you log2(10^6)~=20 doubling times vs starting with say 1000 bacteria that happened to float into your tank from the soil. So if they multiply every day that saves you about 3 weeks. Those numbers are educated guesses, but you can put your own numbers in and do the math to decide how much time it takes to build up your colony of BB. Interesting corollary: Using two bottles only saves you a day.

This is the case in an aquarium but they can also have a flagella (tail) and swim around depending on conditions. They also don't dissolve in water, but they will disperse, which is what you want. You want them to colonize your whole aquarium and not just land in the corner and only live there. I found this cool graphic showing the life cycle of microbes that live in biofilms while writing my PhD thesis. It's much better art than mine. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Biofilm-life-cycle-I-Motile-cells-colonize-a-clean-surface-II-Development-of-the_fig1_326758785 Edit: oops it actually wasn't this figure, which is more recent, but a very similar one. In any case this is a good figure other than the invasion part which we're not really talking about.

That link is a topic page from science direct with snippets from papers. here's the about for that page: I'd agree they need oxygen for "survival" since part of survival is reproduction and growth. But dormant bacteria are not deriving energy, growing, reproducing, or respirating. I think you underestimate how good microbes are at surviving. Under stress bacteria do all kinds of cool things to survive.

There's a LOT of anaerobes (including all life before photosynthesis) that are fine without oxygen or die in the presence of O2. But limiting this to aerobes, if you're basing this idea off the name alone every definition for an obligate aerobe I can find says it requires O2 for growth, not that it's necessary to remain alive. Out of curiosity, what else would a nitrifying bacteria use O2 for? Besides oxidizing ammonia/nitrite?

I disagree with such a strong statement. as you say in your definition oxygen need only be involved or related not necessary. though I do believe nitrifying bacteria are obligate aerobes. I guess it depends on how you define live, but many bacteria can sporulate, or live in stationary phase for a long time. Nitrosomanas seems to do the latter. Here's a paper that shows Nitrosomonas can live (or come back to life if you don't count a inactive metabolism as living) after being starved for almost a year (342 days). https://academic.oup.com/jb/article/124/4/811/807862

I haven't been able to find a statement like this from seachem. They do repeatedly say it "binds" to ammonia though, so I always assumed there were some steric effects that prevent it from being toxic while bound.

hyacinth and lettuce yeah i think so, They can sit in a bucket or something. The lilies, IDK, that might be traumatic for them, i'm not sure how lilies work though.

I think this is not true. The kinetics of NH3 + H <-> NH4+, are dependent on the concentrations [NH3], [H] and [NH4]. So you'd have to change the pH or remove some NH4+ in order to shift the equilibrium further toward NH4+. I'd love to be wrong though if anyone knows how else that can happen. ^this. Although I have less of a problem with him being anonymous and more of a problem with him just saying he did experiments and often times not showing data. Also he makes a lot of assertions as fact that that are unsupported, which may or may not be true (I don't know enough to evaluate that). Given that he's trying to be "scientific" it makes me dubious. But if you use a critical eye there's still lots of good info and food for thought there. Just don't take it as cannon.

It's not quite time yet, but how the heck do you net out pond fish when there's so many plants. My tub pond has tons of fry and some of them will need to come out eventually. I also don't want to remove the friendliest fish and have a tub full of fish that are bred to hide. Here's a photo of my tub for fun and for thumbnail

"clear" usually has additives to make it clear, though in the case of PETG I'm not sure if clear and natural are the same. You'd have to ask the maker which pigment they use in their black petg. White is the same as clear it takes chemicals to make it. If I had to just pick one of them I think i'd pick clear then black petg in that order, since soda bottles are also PET(G? not sure if they're glycol modified or not). I'm cautious about ABS, but it sounds like there's anecdotal evidence that its fine.

This is kinda a myth. In order to compost PLA it needs to be specially processed first. I'm using "food grade" PLA fillament in my tank right now. But "food grade" is a pretty annoying thing to certify so no one that I know of makes it anymore. Also "ABS" or "PETG" or whatever other plastics are rarely pure polymers so just that description is unfortunately not enough to go on. I'd also shy away from ABS in general because it off gasses worse stuff than the others and who knows how long it leaches stuff after its been extruded (maybe not at all, but IDK). As @Nirvanaquatics said, I'd go with PETG unless you have the capability of printing exotics like PP. You can ask manufacturers and sometimes they'll tell you if their original plastic pellets were food safe (extruding it invalidates that and requires a new certification). You'll also have to ask them if their pigments and additives are food safe. Most, in my experience, are unwilling to directly answer because they don't want liability. IMO, your best best is "natural" colored PETG. after that I'd pick black because its /usually/ carbon black which as far as I know won't poison anything.

I meant put acid and base IN the tank and let them react there so it starts as dissolved co2.

hmm. Will it set them back worse if I move them? or is it more about water parameters with them? I'm thinking of putting a red melon sword in that back corner and moving a few further to the center to make room. BBA came in on them and they're the only plant that seems to let it thrive so maybe I'll abandon the val anyway.

Heh, I've thought about the same thing too. As fish folk said you'd have to do it pretty slow and continuously. One thing that I think should work but I'm not sure anyone has tried, is to add a bicarbonate salt and an acid into their tank. it should form CO2 but salts would also accumulate so you'd have to do more water changes (not sure if that means every hour or every week, I haven't done the math). I think for a bicarbonate salt potassium bicarbonate would be a good choice as the K would be taken up by plants. For an acid sulfuric acid would add sulfates, which plants need, so that could work, I forget if sulfates contribute to algae though. I think acetic acid is another option. I /think/ plants can use the acetate left over. I'd love for someone to try this, maybe without fish in until its shown it wouldn't spike co2 too high. would be fun to try out with a couple 5g buckets, desk lamps and a high CO2 plant. I don't have a good way to know if it ODs co2 though.

I bought a Valisnaria sp. (the not-jungle-val one) back in early Feb from ACO because Cory talked about how fast growing they are and I wanted a sort of forestry corner to my tank but now I can't really seem to get it to grow much. The parent plants have grown to maybe 6" tall and they have about 8 runners total between the two of them, but the runners are all short and some of them have stopped growing or started to die even. I've loaded the area up with root tabs but they don't seem to make a difference. I'm also using easy green (1 pump in just over 10g of water, in a 14 g tank) twice a week. Is there anything I should be doing for it? I'm thinking of giving up on it. gh-8 kh-4 ph-high 7's to 8.5 depending on the day and time. (about 8.5 recently) Nitrogens: 0/0/20-40 depending on the day temp: 24C

don't forget extra "feedings" too. My 2yo has put some random stuff in a few times but he's mostly lost interest. He also put a shovel full of dirt in my tub pond while I was setting it up, so now I'm Walstad I guess. After saying no about half a dozen times he doesn't mess with any of my tanks/tubs anymore. With kids though YMMV.

I believe the original gorilla glue is as a PU glue, it expands as it cures and is activated by water. I'm also pretty sure people use PU foam to make fake backgrounds so I assume its safe within a day

The trick is to make sure it happens all the time. Then they'll habituate. Mine's above the trashcan and they used to jump after closing the cupboard, but now it doesn't even wake them if they're sleeping.

Yeah my hot room tank is 90. my living room tank (the room is currently 90) is about 80 now but I've been managing it a bit. My half barrel tub is about 84f even know it's 110 outside.

Well it's been two weeks and I thought I'd update this. Turns out it's both! I have a bunch of white surface dwelling fry that are now eating crushed flake and a bunch of neon white striped fry that zip around 2” under the surface! I'm pretty excited, though I have no clue how I'm going to net them out of the tub when the time comes.

The length of time will be somewhat proportional to the thickness. Even if you don't plan on weighing it down permanently, be sure weigh it down while it waterlogs. That'll provide the max area for water to get in.

Indeed! If it's a last resort and your fish are gasping at the top you can always get creative with a bag of frozen peas or something I put a shade over my tub and have been doing small water changes every day at the peak heat and am still 83f in there when it's 109 now. It's amazing how much heat water can absorb. I've also been wetting the wood of the tub to make it "sweat". I don't think it would last a week of this heat but the 2-3 days it's survived remarkably well.