What is a itrogen cycle in an aquarium?
When people mention the cycle, it’s the nitrogen cycle. And what happens when you set up an aquarium, it is a sterile environment, and as soon as you put a fish in it, the fish is going to invariably go the bathroom, and you’re going to feed the fish. And all of those waste products are going to break down and dilute. When they do that, they are going to become quite toxic to the fish. When you go through a nitrogen cycle, you start with ammonia, and as that builds up, a bacteria grows that converts that ammonia into nitrite. Both of those two components are very toxic to fish. After nitrite develops and raises to a high level, a second bacteria comes in and converts nitrite into nitrate. It, too, is toxic, but fish can tolerate such high levels of it, typically speaking, that we really don’t look at it as a toxin so much. All of those things are acidic in nature, and most fish don’t like acidic water. There are exceptions. They like neutral and very alkaline water. So those are always
