How do you consider a heavy bioload

[guitareefs]

For a 100 gallon mixed reef, how do I know if I will have a high bioload?

Fish I want are only 4 Anthias in all. 3 Female Lyretail and 1 Male.

 

[jinsing]

LOL, hrmmmm bioload

i have a 110g mixed reef,
current fishes are:
powder blue tang
yellow tang
regal tang
naso tang
4 blue chromis
2 cardinals
2 false percs
midas blenny
cleaner wrasse
8line wrasse
mandarin goby
rbta, and gbta

not including the cleaner shrimps, peppermint shrimps, starfishes, and snails and crabs,
but i do plan to add some more colorful fish :lol:
oh and btw, i am runnning a typhoon hob skimmer, since my stand is too short to fit a skimmer in the sump...
also the tank ran skimmerless for 2 months, (cause i broke it)
and levels remain and still is all at zero, but the nitrates are at 5
my tank has been up and running for about 1 year now,
perhaps my 3-4" sandbed saved me, or the deepsand bed in the sump

 

[psteeleb]

In my oppinion 'bio load" is a relative term.

what your planning in most situations should not be considered a high bio load, unless you had minimal live rock or other forms nutrient consumers.

what we try to achieve is a ballace of life in a mixed reef. By this I mean enough life populations from a multitude of species and life types that eventually ballance themselves in the food and cleanup chains to your liking. Areas that are out of ballace in this chain require mechanical filtration. So, high fish loads in smaller tanks that can't support enough biodiversity to clean up the fish wastes require higher degrees of filtration (skimmers, socks, sterilizers, carbon, filters etc.)

One fish with minimal natural or mechanical filtration can be considered a high bioload.

 

[jinsing]

i totally agree with peter here,
i have 200bls of live rock in the tank also, but i try to keep the clean up crew balanced with the stock of the tank, i also do a 10% waterchange every 15-20 days.

 

[kwl1763]

To me there is a very easy way to tell if your bioload is to heavy for your tank.

If you accumulate nitrates at more then slightly detectable levels then your tank is overloaded. This means you don't have sufficient biological filtration (aka denitrifying bacteria) to handle your tanks load.

And as Peter points out, obviously that is different for every tank depending on how much rock, what kind of skimmer, DSB or not, etc, etc, etc

 

[psteeleb]

@kwl1763 wrote:

kwl1763 - that is an excellent indicator.

I want to add some here, with a well rounded biodiversity (inclusive of bacterias and algeas) nitrates can be controled. I recently had a small spike in both algea bloom and nitrates after my interceptor treatment. I attibute the spike to my pod population basically being decimated. With them gone it left a hole in the ballace.

 

[BrianC]

I agree with the statements said before. I think skimming is also a key indicator (specifically the amoung of waste you are pulling out).

I'd like to remind everyone that zooxanthellae is a plant. Plants do utilize nitrates and phosphates for growth. I'm certainly not advocating you keep more than trace levels of nitrates or phosphates in your tank. (I've had the argument with the over-skimmers in the past). But, having a healthy bioload can be very beneficial to maintaining a healthy tank.

Of course I could make the same argument of predators. (and I don't want to have that discussion either).