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Originally Posted by ShaunW  |  | | | | | | | | |
The interesting question is how long does it take and really how dynamic is the bacterial population over time? My belief is that it doesn't stabilize completely until the tank is really mature, i.e. more than 2 years old and much of the surface area within is established with either coral or bacterial biofilms. This is why "old" tanks are always more healthy. | |  | |  | |
I would have to say at minimum it takes about a year of very little change for a tank to become mature. a tank cant really fully balance out untill things stop changing dramaticaly. I.E. once you've reached the full amount of LR your going to add maturing really begins, as long as you keep building up LR your adding more area, more bacterial strains, microfauna, macrofauna, microalgae, macroalgaes etc this all has to balance out into dominant populations. and like you said after about 2 years a tank can generally considered mature because the most dramatic changes usually happen with the first year as well as nutrient influx and export becomes habitual or, maybe better said the tanks owner falls into a semi-ritual of habit for the care of their tank. interest in tanks tend to wax or wane depending on the person after a year a person generally falls into about the habits they are going to keep for the duration (this is a generalization of course), so once things all hit an even stride, the persons feeding habits, fish population (bioload), waterchange habits, equipment maintinence, a tank truly matures obviously its maturing the whole time, but once a tank truly begins to stabilize, the maturation process accellerates.
honestly I think overall the dynamics of bacteria diminishes over time as well as biodiversity of microfauna, this is one reason I have always kept the habit of replacing one large rock every couple of months to keep introducing new populations of microfauna, bacteria etc, to keep my biodiversity higher even if only for a short time. As the strongest tend to survive, the strongest may not be the most efficient detritivors, but simply the hardiest.
thanks for providing those links. I tend to research the heck right out of any new information I find, unfortunatly a lot of the info I want is under lock and key at research institutes and constantly run into brick walls when i find the info I want is going to cost 14$ just to read an article that may or may not actually be what I am looking for.