At the moment you have bacteria that eat chemicals in the water as well as fish pee. The fish pee combined with these bact produce ammonia, which is why the aquarium ammonia levels raise up. But not for long...
Fish "pee" is ammonia. There is no bacteria involved in this step.
Suddenly your scared as the ammonia is gone but nitrat and nitrie have gone up. Now there is a new kid on the block that eats Ammonia but pees nitrogen. The ammonia bacteria has already settled in the filter and gravel/sand, and these guys are going nuts floating around the water on an eating frenzy. Its like a Chinese buffet for them. Then...
Ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate are all nitrogen, with the primary difference being oxidation states. You should correct your terminology so that you can communicate your point better.
A third bacteria comes in that makes everything all better. These bacteria are nitrogen fixation bacteria. They eat nitrate and nitrite and turn it in to oxygen and carbon. Under a microscope the look like little pills that have a tail and swim. They also are the bact that eat excess fish food, poop, and other gunk.
*Second bacteria.
They turn nitrite into nitrate, while consuming oxygen. Carbon is not involved (that would be nuclear fission). They are not the bacteria that eats organic waste, those are the heterotrophs (as opposed to the autotrophic nitrogen bacteria)
No they do not, the filter media is only there to provide a place for the bacteria to colonize. The charcoal in the filter bags not only puts carbon in the water but makes the filter attractive for bacteria to settle in and call home. All bacteria in the tank originate from the water added and the air.
The bit about carbon is wrong, but that's another point. It's true though that bacteria colonize the activated carbon, but that's not in disagreement.
MYTH 2: Constant water changes are needed during the cycle.
Think of the old west. Aside from train robbers and the gold rush, things in the west were pretty rural. The average town was maybe 50-300 people with nothing else around for miles... That is your fish tank in bacteria. Imagine if lincoln went in and bulldozed every town in the west because there were gunslingers everywhere... The west would never have been settled like today. California would still be nothing but back hills and mountaineers. The same goes for your fish tank, if you constantly change the water during this cycle you are not letting the new settlers to move in, which prolongs the whole cycle. Ideally you want to speed up the cycle and make it as inviting as u can for microbs.
I'm not sure what point your analogy is serving here, but the bacteria in question grow and live on surfaces, so water changes largely don't affect them, assuming you dechlor and everything.
Some might but not all. It can help ensure none of them die if you add air stones. The gases coming in the tank have a lower mass then the ammonia and nitrogen... This means the harmful stuff gets pushed upwards in the tank and can not diffuse into the fishes gills as easily...
It means no such thing. Gases don't work like that, especially not dissolved gases.
Which if you understand any of that, understand atleast that its a good thing. Salt can also help as the salt will try to stay at the bottom of the tank and the ammonia and nitrogen will float to the top. As Ammonia and nitrogen have a lower atomic mass then salt.
That's not how solution chemistry works in the slightest. That's actually one of the fundamental differences between solution chemistry and non-solution chemistry. Atomic masses very rarely affect physical properties in the way you're describing.
Yes and no. Stress coat only nourishes the bacteria and feeds them.
No it doesn't. It affects the fish, not the bacteria.
It dosnt add the bacteria at all it just makes it so they are healthy and reproduce faster rather then with out it.
As above, you're not grasping what stress coat does. It augments a fish's slime coat.
Ideally water changes should be about 30% a week during the maturing cycle. And 10% there after. The cycle can range between a week to 3 months depending on the size of tank and how much space (filter, amount of gravel, etc..) bacteria have to populate.
The time spent cycling doesn't have anything to do with tank size, and usually nothing to do with the substrate available. Rather, it's limited by the generation time of the bacteria. An unseeded cycle should never take less than a month.
You can make the tank more inviting by adding that coal from the filter bag to the substrate, you can also use substrate from an already cycled tank. Even taking the filter from an older tank and rinsing it out in the new tank is ideal. Yes it will get ichky but it will clear. In nature nothing can live in clear water, actually clear water is a bad sign. Why would that be different in your living room?
You're not offbase by suggesting that you should seed a new filter with media from an old filter, but you're also confusing autotrophic and heterotrophic bacteria again, with the later not affecting ammonia, and commonly being the free floating cloudy bacteria you often see in tanks.
The life in a fish tank is not limited to just the fish. Every square micro meter is a living breathing ecosystem. Each bacteria feeds off the other which is why the cycle comes in stages. As the ammonia bacteria populate, soon the ammonia eating bacteria follow. If you dont understand this cycle you have no business giving people advice.
Once again, those are the same bacteria. Ammonia is the naturally produced waste product of fish.
