Ok, so I've been struggling with this for a few days. I thought I understood the cycle (I am a Chemical Engineer originally).
Fish eat food, fish poop/pee/respire or however, end up making ammonia.
One type of bacteria (nitrosomonas) converts ammonia into nitrite. Another type (nitrobacter) converts nitrites into nitrates.
Nitrates is food for plants and either needs to be absorbed by plants in the pond or becomes free ample food for algae (which is always there more or less even if you have clear water and the pond has cycled) and, voila, you have a bloom.
SO, the questions:
1) Although the algae helps remove the nitrate, it also removes much oxygen in the process, so ideally you want to stock/feed fish only as much as your plants will allow based on their nitrate requirement. So, how do people maintain crystal clear water in "sterile" looking ponds with koi? I saw one such inside pond at "The Pond Place" and it had 2 ft koi and crystal clear water. I asked how? They said it was UV light. OK, I get that, it kills the free algae. What about the poo/pee stuff though. This pond had zero plants (it was indoors). I am assuming it had good bacteria, so no issues with ammonia and nitrite, but then wouldn't there be nitrate and it would build up even if they had a bottom drain and they were doing water changes? Is there any other way to neutralize the nitrate?
2) Let's say you use the UV light to get rid of free algae (even though some contend that algae is actually fulfilling a purpose which I am assuming is by removing the nitrate which though not as bad as ammonia or nitrite can still hurt the fish if levels go high?). People have said that crystal clear water does not mean it's good for the fish if achieved artificially (i.e. without pond cycling naturally). Lets say you did it anyway (clear water through UV). If this was a bad situation, would this NOT show up on the water testing??? And if the water testing results are clear then is it still an issue?
3) After we used MinnFinn to treat the ich on our fish, we had an algae bloom. The product does say to bypass filter if possible to prevent killing the good bacteria but for our setup it is not possible. Anyway, we were told that the algae bloom was because the medicine wiped out our beneficial bacteria and we needed to add more which we did. Here is the question though: if the good bacteria were wiped out the how did the ammonia become NO2 and how did the NO2 become NO3?? Our testing showed zero NH3, zero NO2 and zero NO3. So how can the algae bloom if there was no NO3, only nitrate and NH3???
Sorry for the rambling, but I really want to understand the mechanics of this cycle and how it works.
Fish eat food, fish poop/pee/respire or however, end up making ammonia.
One type of bacteria (nitrosomonas) converts ammonia into nitrite. Another type (nitrobacter) converts nitrites into nitrates.
Nitrates is food for plants and either needs to be absorbed by plants in the pond or becomes free ample food for algae (which is always there more or less even if you have clear water and the pond has cycled) and, voila, you have a bloom.
SO, the questions:
1) Although the algae helps remove the nitrate, it also removes much oxygen in the process, so ideally you want to stock/feed fish only as much as your plants will allow based on their nitrate requirement. So, how do people maintain crystal clear water in "sterile" looking ponds with koi? I saw one such inside pond at "The Pond Place" and it had 2 ft koi and crystal clear water. I asked how? They said it was UV light. OK, I get that, it kills the free algae. What about the poo/pee stuff though. This pond had zero plants (it was indoors). I am assuming it had good bacteria, so no issues with ammonia and nitrite, but then wouldn't there be nitrate and it would build up even if they had a bottom drain and they were doing water changes? Is there any other way to neutralize the nitrate?
2) Let's say you use the UV light to get rid of free algae (even though some contend that algae is actually fulfilling a purpose which I am assuming is by removing the nitrate which though not as bad as ammonia or nitrite can still hurt the fish if levels go high?). People have said that crystal clear water does not mean it's good for the fish if achieved artificially (i.e. without pond cycling naturally). Lets say you did it anyway (clear water through UV). If this was a bad situation, would this NOT show up on the water testing??? And if the water testing results are clear then is it still an issue?
3) After we used MinnFinn to treat the ich on our fish, we had an algae bloom. The product does say to bypass filter if possible to prevent killing the good bacteria but for our setup it is not possible. Anyway, we were told that the algae bloom was because the medicine wiped out our beneficial bacteria and we needed to add more which we did. Here is the question though: if the good bacteria were wiped out the how did the ammonia become NO2 and how did the NO2 become NO3?? Our testing showed zero NH3, zero NO2 and zero NO3. So how can the algae bloom if there was no NO3, only nitrate and NH3???
Sorry for the rambling, but I really want to understand the mechanics of this cycle and how it works.