Search the Community
Showing results for tags 'bio load'.
Found 1 result
-
Hi All, I'm relatively new to this hobby. I am a software and digital electronic systems engineer by trade, and that tends to color how I look at the world. I've been cycling some tanks over the last several months (one at a time) and thinking about filters and food and bio-load.... I've noticed that its common for folks in the hobby to decry that there is no good empirical way to measure the load of a tank/fish. But, don't we know the load of every tank implicitly by how much food we are putting in? In engineering we often call this black box testing... we have no way to measure all of the intricate processes that are going on in various fish, plants, filters, etc.. but, we can measure the inputs and outputs of the system... if we know how much food is going through the system, say per week or per month, and the system is stable, we can measure the load capacity of the system in units of food (grams?). If ammonia/nitrite start increasing with more food (and doesn't stabilize) we could say that the system has reached filter saturation. If we add raw ammonia (fixed known amount) we could measure how 'reactive' the system is by how long it takes to disappear. It feels to me like with a little thought and experimentation we could quantify this aspect of the hobby. Whether or not that is desirable, i dont know, but it seems like it would help newbs like me 😉
