Fed up with recurring problems in the fish tank?

Why Are Some Aquariums Unstable?

Many beginner fishkeepers give up after a series of problems, each one only preparing the next!

With every imbalance, the fish die, and we go to the shopkeeper who each time recommends a new bottle containing the “magic product” or “miraculous bacteria”!

And each problem brings another…

This phenomenon of “rebound”, where it feels like you are only shifting the problem, each “solution” creating another, is known in system ecology and, more recently, in biology.

Since we have understood the key role of the microbiome in our body, we better understand certain chronic ailments and recurring digestive problems,

Each time, it is the poverty of the microbiome (our microbial flora) that is at fault.

Hygiene has been the greatest medical advance of all time.

But its excess, hygienism, has caused, as we are increasingly discovering, many other ailments.

Certain chronic diseases such as diabetes, asthma, or allergies, even depression, are exploding in developed countries. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rate of allergies and asthma in the East (which was very low) aligned within a few decades with the very high Western rate. So nothing genetic!

We are only at the very beginning of discoveries to come, but it is indeed the richness of the microbiome that is at fault, as it has been impoverished by our lifestyle and diet.

Now, let us apply this way of thinking to the small aquatic world that is our aquarium or pond.

Unlike land animals, fish and other aquatic creatures literally bathe in their microbiome.

Indeed, while ours is only internal or at most limited to our skin, theirs is communicated, from the slightest droppings, to their entire liquid environment.

A large part of the aquatic microbiome is therefore shared by all individuals sharing the same body of water, with specificities according to species and individual. And aquatic ecosystems are made to function this way.

Your aquarium, like any body of water, will have a microbiome largely shared by all its inhabitants.

An aquarium is therefore even more unbalanced than we are due to the impoverishment of microbial richness caused by excessive hygiene.

I knew a lady who cleaned her aquarium completely every month (including the sand), even washing the glass with bleach. Her fish only died, got sick, and the plants remained stunted. The temperature was good, the water parameters perfect, the light ideal…

But these parameters are ultimately very secondary and cannot counter microbial imbalances.

When the number of microbial species (bacteria, yeasts, fungi, viruses…) is reduced, one risks that, for lack of competition, one species will dominate to the detriment of others. It proliferates and all the aquarium’s cycles are distorted.

Adding this or that bottle of product, or such a cloned bacterial strain bought at the pet shop will only solve the problem on the surface, but another will then appear, the underlying problem not being resolved: a true microbial richness in which no species is dominant enough to unbalance the whole.

The answer to imbalances is not to remove an overly present creature, but to increase diversity to “put it back in its place”!

It is this “systemic” logic that allowed Aquazolla to develop starting doses that maximize the “microbial library” of aquariums and ponds just after filling with water.
Because osmosis water or tap water is a true microbial desert.

Likewise, introducing a new Zollabox start each year allows recharging this diversity, like a booster shot.

Of course, your fish will probably quickly eat the small invertebrates contained in the doses provided (daphnia, Blackworm, various ostracods), but it does not matter: they will have had time to communicate to the water in the bag all their specific microbiome, that is thousands of species and millions of strains per individual!

For two years, Aquazolla has also been including in these doses samples taken from old periphytons (more than 10 years for some). Periphyton is this more or less hard “crust” that forms on underwater walls (in a trash aquarium for example) and over time constitutes an incredible collection of all species (dormant or not) that have lived there over time!

The principle is therefore to have the maximum microbial richness, so that the ecosystem can necessarily find hundreds of species corresponding to its current needs to establish hundreds of biological cycles (the nitrogen cycle is only one among hundreds of others!).

To sum up: avoiding introducing this or that algae, this or that organism into the aquarium is almost always in vain, since even dust in the air can contain them! Aiming for controlled sterility is a strategy with little hope!

On the other hand, the opposite strategy, which consists of installing so much microbial biodiversity that no species can proliferate excessively, is effective. It is even what nature does!

Breeders know this strategy under the name of “clean filth”: it is better to accept the host of microbes to which an animal is accustomed than to want to disinfect everything.

Returning to the aquarium, it has been shown on the great daphnia (a popular laboratory study subject) that the poverty of the microbiome causes disease, reduced longevity, and limited or even nonexistent reproduction.

So, if even the gut of a simple little daphnia tells you this!...

Mattier, June 12, 2023