# biological aquarium supplements



## GeorgeR (6 Sep 2017)

Hi,

Once a planted tank is established is there any need to add a biological aquarium supplement such as Fluval Cycle or Easy Life Easystart after maintenance?

I am using Pure Aquarium "balls" weekly and will probably continue with these, but wondered if i am wasting my time with additional additives?

Would appreciate your thoughts. 

Thanks.


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## Planted Bows (6 Sep 2017)

I've never ever bothered with either of those. The thing I ask myself is. In the wild do they have these additives once setup? All I do is keep it simple  

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## mort (6 Sep 2017)

As above really. In a healthy aquarium all the bacteria will be there so I don't feel the need to add more. Even if you clean your filter and reduce the number the bacteria population will quickly recover as they grow like, well bacteria.


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## dw1305 (6 Sep 2017)

Hi all, 





GeorgeR said:


> Once a planted tank is established is there any need to add a biological aquarium supplement such as Fluval Cycle or Easy Life Easystart after maintenance?
> 
> I am using Pure Aquarium "balls" weekly and will probably continue with these, but wondered if i am wasting my time with additional additives?


You are good.

You don't need to add anything once the plants are growing.

Plant/microbe biological filtration is much more effective than "microbial only" filtration, it is also a lot more resilient and flexible.The main reasons are that:

Plants create conditions which vastly increase both the size, and range, of niches available for microbial colonisation.
Plants take up all forms of fixed nitrogen (NH4+, NO2- & NO3-), and are massively net oxygen producers and oxygen is the prime metric in biological filtration
What the various sellers of of these bacterial supplements don't tell you is that most of the nitrification of ammonia in aquariums is carried out by Archaea, rather than bacteria, and that the microbial assemblage you get under low ammonia loadings is very different from the one you get in the bio-reactors where these products are produced.

There is much more on the forum about this, have a look at <"Do I need to cycle.......">  & <"Oxygen levels...."> and links.

cheers Darrel


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## GeorgeR (9 Sep 2017)

Thanks for the advise Gents.


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